


Yellow

by meroboh



Category: Love Island (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Trauma, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, complex PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 13:31:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 38,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20892902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meroboh/pseuds/meroboh
Summary: And suddenly, so smoothly, Bobby spins you around so your back is against the villa wall. Your stomach flips like a pancake. He leans toward you, resting his weight on the wall with one arm. “The thing about baking is that it’s no just an art, it’s a science, too. Too much of this, too little of that and your cake’s pooched.”“So what you’re saying is…”“What I’m sayin’ is that ye have to really learn how everything works together to create the perfect rise, you get me?”“I think you’re trying to tell me why you’re so good in bed.”Bobby bursts out laughing. “See? This is why I dinna do ‘sexy’.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The wonderful, wonderful primr0se has graciously allowed me to use the nickname she came up with for MC in her brilliant fic "Sunshine" (here on ao3). Everyone go read that one next! Thanks to you, DarthVada88, and throughthejunobush for your advice and for being my beta buddies! <3
> 
> Chapters 1-14 of Yellow were written and uploaded prior to the tragic death of Caroline Flack in Feb 2020. #BeKind
> 
> TW: This story deals with some tougher subjects including childhood trauma history (not sexual abuse) in a non-graphic, respectful way.

You stumble into the artificial light of the Beach Hut with Bobby, bleary-eyed from sleep. “Ugh, it’s too early…” you groan. “Brad, do we really need to do this now?”

“Afraid so,” says Brad, a producer with an American accent. “You guys haven’t been interviewed for a few days and Alison is grinding my gears. Let’s get this in the can before Lottie and Rocco wake up and start rehashing their drama without us.”

You nod, feeling a light touch on the small of your back as Bobby guides you to the wicker bench. “I’ll make ye a brew once we’ve finished,” he whispers.

At home, your schedule has you awake either working or studying before dawn, and you actually enjoy the quiet time by yourself. But since coming to the villa a week ago you’ve lost any sense of what time it is when, having gradually settled into a routine of late nights and lazy mornings. More importantly, the drama of the past couple of days has left you emotionally drained and too wired to sleep. So after a restless night, Bobby’s offer to make you a cuppa is much appreciated and you look to him gratefully before you’re no longer able to resist the yawn that’s been creeping up on you.

Bobby chuckles and drapes his arm around your shoulder, giving you a friendly squeeze. “Sorry, my fault for being the first to wake up this morning,” he says. “Ready?”

You glance at your surroundings. It’s really weird seeing the wood-panelled interior of the Beach Hut from inside out, and still you can hardly believe you’re here. You'd applied on a whim, not thinking you had any chance of actually being accepted. In fact, you'd almost backed out when you were. But you had to admit to yourself that since your breakup with Ben last summer, you'd settled into a bit of a dating rut, too afraid of repeating past mistakes to put yourself out there.

And when you had stepped onto the lawn that first day to see Noah, who moved on the outer edge of the same social circle as you, your jaw nearly hit the floor. You know your best friend (and mukbang cohost) Becca would be rolling her eyes, but you can’t help but see his presence here as the villa giving you a second chance to finish the only thing you'd been brave enough to start in the last year. Noah is hot as fuck and not just to look at.

You look back to Bobby and smile. “Ready. Let’s do this.” With the promise of caffeine, you’re beginning to feel the brain fog of the morning lift. 

“Great,” says Brad absently, glancing at sheet of paper before looking back up at the two of you. “Remember, the audience won’t hear the question. You’re creating a soundbite, so answer in complete sentences and add a little context, okay? The first question is: what do you both think of Henrik and Lucas?”

Bobby pauses for a minute, preparing his soundbite. “So, we’ve had two new lads come in, Henrik an’ Lucas.” He looks at you and says, “What do ye think of Henrik?”

“Henrik’s got a great vibe,” you say. “I think he’ll be good for the villa.”

Bobby nods. “I agree wi’ that. He’s like a hype machine! I reckon it’ll be good for us having someone like that around,” he says. “And what about Lucas?”

“He’s a good sort,” you say. “I’m not sure he’s my type, though.”

“Aye. A few of the lads weren’t so sure when he came in, but he’s really grown on us. I think he’s actually pretty chill. It'll be good for us to have around these days especially.”

“Got it. Next one,” says Brad, clicking his tongue while he looks for his spot on the page. “Aha. Obviously you guys are in a friendship couple,” he reads, “How are you feeling about that, and is there anyone else you would like to be coupled up with?”

“That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” you reply, chuckling.

“Soundbite, Jamie.”

“Right. Sorry, I’ll start again.” You pause for a moment, then say, “I’m loving being in a friendship couple with Bobby. He’s such a good mate and,” you add, looking at him, “you’re really thoughtful. I mean, seriously, I’m barely awake yet and he’s offered to make me tea after this. And you make the _best_ tea. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Leaves, water, and love,” Bobby says with a smile, revealing the dimple on his left cheek. “But most importantly, a kitchen timer.”

“Still, I did come here for romance. Sorry, Bobby.”

“I am mortally wounded!” wails Bobby, eyes closed tight and clutching a fist to his chest. “Put me out of my misery!”

“Somebody get this man a BAFTA,” you say, giving Bobby a nudge. “But yeah. Grafting on Noah has been… confusing?” you say. “But he and I have that weird history, and there's just something about him that I'm not ready to let go of just yet.“

"I think there's less hope for me an’ Priya, to be honest. She and Rahim seem pretty solid.”

“Yeah, not too many mixed messages there, I’m afraid,“ you say, as Brad touches his earpiece, listening, and furrows his brow.

“Good enough,” says Brad. “Lottie and Rocco are about to blow, we’ve gotta get them in here. Thanks guys.”

As you step out of the Beach Hut, you see Lottie and Rocco waiting in silence to go in, standing a couple of meters apart from each other on either side of the word “bougie” in yellow stylized lettering. Alison is there too, leaning against the stark white wall and speaking softly into her headset.

“We’re not allowed to say anything to each other until we go in,” says Lottie sourly, crossing her arms. Something on your face must have betrayed that you picked up on the chill in the room.

“Good luck,” you say, grabbing Bobby’s hand and squeezing past them as you make your way down the hall.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun is high in the sky and wicked hot. You and Lottie have taken refuge in the pool and are chatting in hushed tones about the upcoming afternoon. Earlier that morning, the islanders had received a warning from the producers that one of them would be receiving a text, inciting a frenzy of activity as everyone searched for their phones. “Why don’t bikinis have any damn pockets!” Lottie had bellowed, finally locating her phone under a duvet.

It was about 15 minutes later that Priya came running into the bedroom from outside shouting, “Guys! I got a text! Come outside!” As you followed her out, you noticed that Priya was electric with excitement. She was practically a human embodiment of the word _squee_ as she waited for everyone else to gather in the kitchen.

Marisol looked a little non-plussed. Noticing her expression, Priya said, “You’ll see why I screamed when you hear what the text says.”

Everyone looked at her expectantly as she entered her passcode and pulled it back up on screen. “_Girls, later today you will decide which boy is the most dateable. Guys, smooth out those manners and straighten out those lines! It’s date or break time! #pecsorpersonality #nobudgiesmugglersallowed.”_

While you had hoped that this “most dateable” challenge would be a distraction from the drama of the past few days, so far it was merely spurring Lottie on. She had quickly identified the power advantage and you can tell that even now in the pool, a few hours after the announcement, she’s still getting off on the idea of using the competition as leverage against Rocco.

You see Marisol crossing the astroturf towards you and suppress a groan. Her chin is high and her eyes are sparkling with defiance as she approaches you and Lottie. _This can’t be good_.

“Have you seen Rocco?” she says, making eye contact with you and intentionally avoiding Lottie.

“He’s probably shedding his skin,” Lottie says sharply.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Come on, Lottie. Rocco totally snaked you, but this is way overboard,” you say.

“Nevermind,” she replies, hauling herself out of the pool and wrapping herself in a towel. “Catch you later, lovebirds.”

With Lottie now out of earshot, you say, “Sorry, Marisol. She’ll come around. She always does.”

Marisol’s posture softens as she crouches down at the edge of the pool. “I don’t really care, to be honest. I feel bad about what happened with Rocco, but the longer this goes on, the less bad I feel.”

“Understandable,” you say. “Besides, Lottie wasn’t even really that into Rocco. You could have handled it all better, but in here you’ve got to follow your gut.”

“Thanks, Jamie. I knew _you’d_ get it. But …”

Suddenly you feel heat rise up your body and you duck your head underwater like an idiot. You had caught Noah’s eye from across the length of the pool, where he’s relaxing on one of the lounge chairs while Hope comforts Lottie. He’s still looking at you as you resurface, but awkwardly turns back to the conversation. You wonder how long he’s been watching. You can tell that he’s embarrassed, too.

“What the… Jamie? I need to talk to him.”

“Oh, Rocco? Sorry. I haven’t seen him since the text this morning,” you say. “He’s not with the others?” _Fuck_. You’re flustered now, and probably bright red.

Marisol stares at you. “No, I think he needed some space. From Lottie. Maybe from me too. I think their interview in the Beach Hut was so bad they can’t even air it. Alison threatened to re-film it.”

“Yikes,” you say, perhaps a little absently.

Marisol turns to look at the others by the jacuzzi, then removes her mic. In a fluid motion she winds an elastic from her wrist around her hair, forming a messy topknot, and slips neatly into the pool. “Look. It’s obvious from your body language that something’s just happened. What’s going on with Noah?” she asks in a low voice.

You shake your head. “Nothing. Not since the slime challenge.”

“What? That was three days ago. That’s an eternity in here.”

“I know. I can never tell what he’s thinking. He’s really hot and cold with me. Like, just now I caught him looking at me, but he’s been avoiding me for the past few days. He and Hope are practically attached at the hip.”

“Listen, I’m obviously not one to judge, given the situation I’m in. But that boy doesn’t know what he wants,” says Marisol softly.

“Hope seems pretty determined to tell him what he wants, though,” you say, feeling the frustration outpace your embarrassment, finally.

“Watch out for him, Jamie,” says Marisol before casting her eyes back over to the loungers. “It’s so weird that you guys knew each other before this.”

“Yeah, Becca’s probably howling at the TV. I may not be getting anymore invites to her brother’s New Year’s parties.”

“I guess it depends on what happens in here,” Marisol says, shrugging.

“God, he was always the hottest one there. This past year was the first year I was single, but I chickened right out.” You shake your head at the memory, laughing. “I swear, in the real world, he’s literally a hot librarian cliché. He seriously wore elbow patches to a party.”

Marisol arches an eyebrow. “Yeah, he just went from an eight to a nine and a half for me,” she says. “Some of my professors dress like that. It’s hot.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Hey, he should totally play that up that for the contest this afternoon,” says Marisol, nudging her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her index finger and smirking. “Does Bobby know what he’s doing?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’ll head over soon and see how he’s feeling.” You look over Marisol’s shoulder at Bobby who’s sitting with Noah and the group by the jacuzzi. He looks relaxed, but if there’s one thing you know about Bobby, it’s that he’s probably bricking it on the inside.

* * *

“If the snake handler is still looking for her pet, I saw him heading to the smoking area,” says Lottie as you approach the group.

“Thank you,” you say, choosing to ignore the insult. You sit down on a bench and silently type out a message to Marisol on your phone. As you press send, you suddenly feel Bobby’s presence as he sits beside you.

“Hi sunshine,” he whispers, giving you a friendly but comforting pat on the leg.

“Changing the subject," says Noah pointedly, "are you worried about this most dateable contest, Bobby?”

“Nope. I just try to live in the moment. I don’t worry about the future until I’m stuck in it.”

“I think I like that,” Henrik says thoughtfully.

“It’s a motto I try to live by,” Bobby says.

Ibrahim sinks back heavily into his lounge chair and covers his face with his palms. “I’m totally going to blow this.”

“Don’t worry hon. I’ll be voting for you,” says Priya. She reaches over and threads her arm under his. Rahim smiles weakly, but his eyes still seem panicked.

“Well, whatever happens, I know I’ll be sticking by my Noah,” says Hope, planting a kiss on his cheek. There’s something a little overdone about the way she says it, like she’s performing for _you _in particular. Noah shifts uncomfortably and smiles. For a fraction of a second, his eyes meet yours before he turns to Hope and puts his arm around her. The whole thing feels kind of gross and confusing, but also strangely exciting?

A few days ago, you had taken the slime challenge too far. A conversation with the others about how weirdly possessive Hope was of Noah had left you feeling bolder than usual. She had taken him from you after you’d chosen him on the first day, blasting in like a bull in a china shop and arbitrarily re-assigning Noah to herself because he was the “hottest thing she’d ever laid eyes on,” or something like that. From that point on it's felt like she's had Noah under lockdown. Realistically speaking you _are_ a threat, but her territorial behaviour is alarmingly inappropriate and not at all in the spirit of the game. In your opinion, at least.

Furtive smiles across the terrace further encouraged you, along with the shared knowledge of your flirtatious history in the real world. You had never been in a love triangle before, but you were refusing to roll over and die on this. You had spent this past New Years Day hungover and kicking yourself. If ever there were a situation where you could see yourself cracking on with someone else’s partner, it was in an artificial environment like a game show where the boy you were pursuing had been stolen out from under you and practically held hostage.

At the slime challenge, you had recognized an opportunity and apparently, so had Noah. The producers, milking the islanders for all possible drama, had given you the chance to rub up against Noah as a legitimate part of the game. So you did. “Fancy meeting you here,” he had said, tilting his head as you approached. A nod back to their flirtatious encounter prior to the villa, surely.

You were already covered in slime, Hope had reminded you, as if she had forgotten the purpose of the challenge. You started to rub up against Noah, his slime slipping over you with each movement, when suddenly he grabbed you by the hips and attempted to lift you into a piggyback position. But the slime made it impossible for him to get a grip and you slipped off him, landing hard on the platform butt-first.

“That was… not meant to happen,” he said, laughing and holding out his hand to help you back to your feet. You locked eyes with him as you stood up, heart suddenly pounding from the thrill of it all. His arm slipped around your waist and pulled you to him, hand resting on the small of your back, the skin there already beginning to feel tight with drying smears of red and yellow slime.

“Guys! I got a text!” shrieks Priya, bringing you back to the present moment. Gary and Lucas come running in, followed by Rocco and Marisol.

“_Islanders, this afternoon the boys will be performing in a Talent Contest. The girls will choose which boy’s act impresses them the most. #islandersgottalent #mrloveisland.”_

“A talent contest?” says Lucas, rubbing the back of his neck and furrowing his brow.

“We’re in the deep end now, Lucas,” says Henrik, standing up.

The islanders begin clearing the area, some of the boys rushing to the villa dressing room with more urgency than others. Bobby hasn’t stood up yet, so neither do you, and eventually you are alone together.

You look over at him. He's pale and staring off into space. _Yep, bricking it. _You only ever see the real Bobby in fragments if you know where to look. His guard is almost always up, ready to deflect you with a joke or a smile. In the moments when you catch him with his guard down, he's almost like a scared little boy. You think you can read him fairly well, and you're sure his defenses are the reason he's had so much difficulty seeing (and being seen by) anybody in here as more than a friend. "Hey, Bob?" you say gently, resting your hand on his forearm.

"Aye,” he says brightly, snapping back to reality. Serious Bobby is gone, and probably regretting that he hadn’t gone by unnoticed. Now isn’t the time to talk.

You look him in the eye and raise an eyebrow as a high-pitched squeak cuts through the afternoon air.

Bobby gasps. “You _didn't_."

"Yeah, I did," you say.

Bobby practically explodes with laughter, collapsing into you. With little effort he returns the favour, and you’re both wiping tears from your eyes by the time he makes a move to towards the villa.

“Thanks for the talk, Jamie.”

“Anytime,” you reply, amazed at how little needed to be said.


	3. Chapter 3

You’re filling up your water bottle in the kitchen. With the boys out of sight and a few of the girls actively avoiding you, you’ve found yourself on your own for once.

You look toward Hope and Lottie who are chatting animatedly amongst themselves on the daybeds with their backs to you. Even from behind you can read their body language, and you deduce that it's probably best for you to steer clear of them until the talent contest.

You feel someone approaching and look behind you. “Noah!” you say, startled, as your water bottle slips out of your hand and crashes into the sink. Noah jolts a bit at the noise, too. “Sorry…”

“It’s okay, Jamie. Mind if I fill up?” he says, holding up his water bottle before joining you at the sink.

You can feel the hair on his arm touch your skin. It’s too much and you quickly retrieve your bottle and step away from him under the guise of grabbing a tea towel. There’s a palpable tension between you, the awkwardness of the afternoon having gone unresolved. You’re desperate to rescue yourself from feeling this way, and you blurt out the first thing that comes to mind: “How’s it going with Hope?” _Shit. Shiiiit._

Noah cocks his head at you. “Um, great?” There’s something about the way he looks at you for that split second—hurt in his eyes, perhaps—that ignites the nerve endings in your gut. You’ve made a right mess of this and you know it.

“Sorry, I meant to ask about… the talent contest,” you finish weakly.

“Right,” he says, turning on the tap. “It’s, uh… going okay.”

Noah fills his water bottle in silence and it’s excruciating. Strangely it feels like the only antidote to the awkwardness is to narrow the distance between you and him to make up for the gulf you’ve created. It doesn’t even feel like you’ve consented when your body begins to move forward, but Noah shuts off the tap, his bottle full. “See you later,” he says, moving towards the walkway into the villa.

In that moment you feel your insides shrivelling with embarrassment, like a black hole collapsing in upon itself.

He pauses a moment, then turns back to you. “Actually, Jamie? I could use your help.”

“Help with what,” you say, flushed. You feel instant relief at what feels like a bandaid on the afternoon, but it is short-lived.

“Mr. Love Island. I can’t talk out here. Come with me.”

You follow Noah into the dressing room where the air is heavy with passion-fruit scented mist. The first thing you see is Bobby crowbarring himself into one of Priya’s dresses and Henrik looking at different lipsticks. It would be a weird but pleasant atmosphere if it weren’t for the Noah thing.

"Can't you ask Hope?"

"No way," he says. "Come on Jamie. I'd owe you big time. Please?" He looks totally lost amid the chaos.

There’s something in your gut warning you that you are uncomfortable with this. Nevertheless, after what happened in the kitchen, the idea of saying no is also kind of unbearable. You can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of alternate universe where it’s normal to feel bad for rejecting the guy who’s been rejecting you all week. There’s something calming about this thought that, along with the otherwise good vibes in the room, helps to defuse some of the tension you feel from the afternoon. So you put on your game face and agree, hoping to push through the weirdness that your relationship has become.

Noah breathes a sigh of relief. “Thanks. You’ve saved my skin. I won’t forget this.”

* * *

Some time later, you emerge from the villa and make your way to the loungers where Priya and Marisol are sunning themselves.

“Oh, how’s it going in there?” says Priya, grinning.

You chuckle. “I’m telling you, it’s chaos.”

“What are they doing?” asks Marisol, sitting up and lifting her sunnies.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

You stretch out and feel the sun’s warmth on your skin. Helping Noah with the talent contest had been… fine. Good, even. Maybe even great? After a bit of a rocky start, you had talked him into playing up the sexy librarian angle for the swimsuit contest as Marisol had suggested. “It’s just walking,” you’d said, “so do that wearing your glasses, and say something about late fines or something.” You’d gotten a laugh out of him and he thanked you, pulling you into a hug. And you smelled him. He still smelled _so good._

It took you right back to New Year’s Eve at Becca’s brother’s party when you’d first experienced it. It wasn’t even cologne, you don’t think. It was too subtle for that. Moisturizer? Hair product? Some combination of that and just… him. In an instant you were in Jack’s bedroom, alone together with all the partygoers’ coats. You don’t even remember how you got there, but there you were, up against the wall with Noah pressing himself against you. His fingers tangling into your hair and tugging down, exposing the soft skin of your throat…

But it had ended before it finished. Someone had stumbled in, and having come up for air, you both realized that you were too embarrassed, too drunk, and neither of you had any protection anyway.

You wonder whether Noah is thinking about it, too, or whether Hope even knows how close you came to going all the way at the time. But you can’t worry about that now. It’s not your business to worry about it anyway.

* * *

_“I’d like to start by giving a special thank you to Jamie for helping me out earlier. It would have been easy for her to say no, but Jamie’s not the kind of girl to leave you in your hour of need. You can count on her to give you advice, boost your confidence, and be a mate when you need one. Just so you know, Jamie, if there was a special Miss Love Island contest, you’d get my vote. That special talent was too much…”_

And Hope had lost it. “What the actual _fuck?!_ What’s your special talent, Jamie? Homewrecking?!” she had said, her face tight with rage as Alison hovered nervously, keeping security on standby.

Bobby had quickly stepped up, trying to calm everyone down while Priya and Marisol ushered you away from the lawn in tears. You only had a few minutes to collect yourself in the villa lounge before Danny, the camera guy in the room, warned you that you needed to be at the fire pit on schedule. It wasn’t hard to figure out what that meant: there was a public vote on the horizon.

The rest of the evening was awful. Amidst infighting, you had to discuss as a group which of the boys were most likely and least likely to go home with a girlfriend, and those voted least likely would be at risk of being dumped from the island. Somehow Bobby ended up in the bottom three, though you had an idea of who might have put him there.

But now, the worst of the drama is over and you find yourself back in the lounge. This time Bobby is with you. You’re laying awake, totally unable to sleep and you’re realizing that the slime challenge had been a big mistake. Today has been the worst day in the villa hands down.

“Dinna be so hard on yourself, lass. Remember, she stole him from you first. It wouldna be fair for her to play by the rules of the game and you not.”

“This is not a game to me, though,” you say with a sigh.

“I know. It’s probably less a game for you than it is for anyone else, to be honest, but what I mean is that it isna real life in here and the rules are different. It’s only fair that ye both get to play by the same rules.”

“I know you’re right,” you say. “You know, she’s not as loyal as you think she is. At least I’m not being secretive about Noah.”

“I love that about ye, sunshine,” says Bobby, hugging you to him. “You’re honest. Sometimes too honest.”

You smile lightly. Wrapped up in the duvet together you feel at peace. It’s warm and there’s something about Bobby that seems to make everything feel better. “Are you doing alright these days?” you ask, remembering that the day was actually pretty tough for him, too.

“Excellent,” he says jokingly. “Nah, I’m okay. Aside from this bottom three business, but that’s for future Bobby to worry about.“

Before you can respond, he says, “Hold on.” He slips out from beneath the blankets, does a commando roll towards the lounge door (you bunch the duvet up to your face to muffle your laughter) and tiptoes out.

In less than a minute he’s back, holding in his hand a perfect lemon cupcake.

“That’s not…”

“Naw, it's no the cupcake from my pants.”

You accept it from him gratefully and open the duvet for him to climb back in. The buttercream is beautiful and light, very sweet (as buttercream is) but with a hint of sharpness from the lemon. “This is proper mint.”

“You know, I havna even tried ‘em yet,” he says, chuckling. “It was a mad dash to finish in time.” You hold the cupcake to him and he takes a bite. “Magic,” he says with his mouth full.

You lay together a while, sharing the cupcake back and forth in comfortable silence. “You know what my special talent was?” you say, licking the last of the lemon buttercream off your fingers. “I can name every English monarch.”

“Is that it!” says Bobby in disbelief. “Why did he say it that way, then?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” you say, shrugging. “Anyways, we should try to get some sleep.”

“Good shout. Tiptoe race to the loo?” he says, smiling. “First one to the toothpaste wins.”


	4. Chapter 4

If there’s one thing you’ve learned to do in your life, it’s to recognize when someone is pretending, whether they know it or not. But when it comes to Lottie, you don’t much care anymore.

“Anyone who’s _that_ loud about how loyal they are probably isn’t as loyal as they say,” says Bobby. It’s early in the evening and the two of you are on the daybeds with Priya, watching with some amusement as Danny hovers with his camera by the jacuzzi like a vulture.

“The producers are sadists,” you say in disbelief. Somehow, _somehow_, Rocco and Lottie had won the mean tweets challenge and when she’d finished sulking, Rocco was ready and waiting for her to claim their prize. All the way from the daybeds it’s clear he’s relishing the opportunity to question her reaction to the tweet about Gary snogging someone after coupling up with Marisol.

Bobby leans back against the headboard, sighing. He catches your eye and frowns.

“What’s on your mind?” you ask.

“It’s just that we have a much better idea of what the public thinks now. It’s weird. You forget all the cameras in here, but now I’m suddenly aware of them again. Especially after that tweet about Hope playing Noah.”

“Oh yeah?” you say, feeling your a tightness developing in your chest at the mere mention of his name.

“Aye. It’s funny… people on the outside see more stuff than we do, but they dinna see it all. Hope said the public doesn’t know the full picture, but I canna tell if I agree with it or no. Do ye reckon those tweets were onto something?”

“They were hit and miss,” you say thoughtfully.

“By the way, I don’t believe for a second that you’re a player,” says Priya, laying a hand on his shoulder.

He smiles and stares ahead, fingering the white drawstring on his purple trunks. Every once and a while you catch hints of Bobby’s vulnerability, but you haven’t figured out how to reach him. It’s as if he recoils at the idea of anyone knowing how deeply sensitive he really is, despite how obvious he must know it to be.

You feel a strange, visceral urge to touch him. To platonically touch him, but… to touch him and help him feel comfortable in your presence the way he did for you last night. You can’t help but lean over and kiss his cheek, and he chuckles, visibly embarrassed. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride!” he says, hooting with laughter.

“Guys, look, she’s kicking off!” says Priya suddenly.

Across the terrace, Lottie knocks back her drink in one shot then chucks her plastic champagne flute onto the deck.

“I guess their jacuzzi date is done,” says Bobby, amused. “D’you reckon we can finish that bottle, or are the producers gonna be wankers about it?”

“Run or you’ll never find out,” you say, but he’s already gone.

From a distance, you watch Rocco pick up the bottle, slump his shoulders a little, then hand it to Brad who’s swooped in at the first sign of commotion. Halfway across the astroturf Bobby stops in his tracks and turns back towards the daybeds, shrugging. “Salmon!” he cries and launches himself into the pool with a wriggly bellyflop.

You and Priya linger on the daybeds, watching the shadows lengthen across the lawn as Bobby and Gary fight each other with pool noodles. The sun starts sinking behind the distant hills, casting the villa in a pink-yellow glow. As dusk approaches, the fact that two boys will be dumped from the island reaches the forefront of your mind and you look out towards Bobby who is climbing out of the pool, noodle in hand, chasing after Lottie. _That boy_, you think to yourself. _Always trying to cheer people up._

* * *

You knew it was coming, but you still aren’t ready. That husky voice can only belong to one person—Caroline Flack—and that means it’s time for the dumping. She strides in confidently, her hot pink halter-neck maxi dress billowing out behind her as if in slow motion, and instructs everyone to gather at the fire pit.

“She’s _fit_,” says Rocco.

You all take your places. Bobby, Lucas, and Rocco stand in front of you with their hands clasped.

“This is proper brutal,” Gary says. He’s right. Two boys are about to be dumped, and one of them might be Bobby. You glance at Marisol who is discretely wiping her eyes. There’s no question as to whether or not the public will save Rocco; In his case, this ritual is a mere formality. The real competition is between Lucas and Bobby. You make eye contact with him and he smiles warmly, winking at you as if to say, “Don’t worry about me. I got this, sunshine.”

“Islanders, you’ve had your say,” announces Caroline, “and now so has the public. It’s time to say goodbye to two boys. The first boy to be dumped from the island is…”

You hold hands with Priya and Marisol, standing on either side of you.

“Rocco,” she finishes. He nods.

Marisol is looking at the ground silently, hardly reacting. You squeeze her hand.

“The second islander to be dumped from the island is…”

Lucas closes his eyes, waiting. _God, these dramatic pauses are painful._ You’d always assumed that on the show they were edited to be this way, but the truth is that they’re even longer in real life. At least that’s how it feels right now.

“Lucas,” says Caroline finally.

Bobby breathes a sigh of relief before turning to throw his arms around Lucas whose eyes are glassy with held back tears. “I’m sorry, mate.”

“Lucas and Rocco, your time in the villa has come to an end. You have 30 minutes to pack your bags and say your goodbyes.”

The islanders start getting up from the fire pit to hug the boys. After spending some time with Rocco and Lucas, you finally make your way toward Bobby and silently wait as the others take their turns congratulating him. There is a break in the traffic and he looks to you and smiles. No words need to be said, your relief is obvious as you stand on your tiptoes and wrap your arms around him. You can feel his body shaking slightly as he embraces you, as if he can finally release all the uncertainty and tension of the past 24 hours. “You’ve not lost your wingman yet,” he says.

* * *

The lights are already out and you’re the last to leave the bathroom for the night. You can hear the other islanders in their beds downstairs clowning around as usual, a nightly ritual before everyone finally settles down to sleep. As you round the corner to the stairs you—

“Bloody hell, Noah!”

“Sorry, Jamie. I was actually looking for you up here…”

You’re recovering from the shock of bumping into monsters in the dark, but you can feel the dread of the upcoming conversation growing in your stomach. You don’t know what to say, so you don’t say anything. By accident really. The moment just seems to get away from you.

He steps forward into the cool glow of the lights from outside the panel windows. “You’ve been avoiding me all day,” he says. “Can we talk?”

You don’t really want to. You’re too angry with him and this, you feel, is a natural development. You wonder why you can’t seem to say no as you find yourself agreeing and leading him down the hall and into the dressing room towards the roof terrace. He sits down on one of the padded benches and you sit opposite him.

And once again you’re sitting in awkward silence with Noah. He’s staring out over the terrace, and you’re grateful at least for the lack of eye contact. Is this what being in a relationship with him would feel like?

“I’m really sorry, Jamie. I’ve fucked it.” He’s still not looking at you.

“What, exactly, have you fucked?” you ask in disbelief. His apology is as confusing as every other interaction you’ve had since arriving at the villa. This boy is the king of mixed signals.

“I don’t even know. Things with Hope. And I think I’ve led you on,” he says, hanging his head. “I’m just really not sure what I’m feeling.”

“Does she know you’re here?”

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes finally drifting away from the landscape and over to yours. “Surprised?”

You shake your head, even though you are.

“Look,” he continues. “I _do_ have feelings for you. New Year’s Eve was really special to me and to be honest, I was kicking myself the next day for not saying something to you before I left for Romford.”

You feel your expression softening at his words. “I was, too.”

He looks up at you. “You were?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You know, I couldn’t believe my luck when you walked out the door on the first day.”

You don’t reply immediately, but there’s an electricity between the two of you now. You smile softly at him. This is the first time you’ve spoken of the party in anything other than veiled or flirtatious tones and it seems to have broken the ice to be serious about it.

“But,” he says, standing up. “I am with Hope now and I should probably give that a fair chance, yeah? She’s forgiven me. You know what she’s like, though. She hasn’t forgotten.”

There’s something about what he’s said that rubs you the wrong way, but the thought evaporates as you welcome him for a hug. Your cheek rests directly on his skin and you become aware of your body humming with the thrill of being this close to him again. He’s in nothing but his pale blue pajama shorts and as you shift your stance, standing on your tiptoes to pull him down closer to you, you feel his excitement, too.

Minutes later you’re curled up in bed with Bobby who’s sound asleep and snoring lightly. You’re horny as fuck and more confused than ever. Noah was so non-committal about Hope—it’s almost like he was asking you to take the lead. And in that moment, you decide to do just that. Hope’s words after the pageant linger in your head as you lay there, trying to sleep: “If someone thinks they can turn Noah’s head, I’d like to see them try.”


	5. Chapter 5

_Jamie, you will go on the first date of the afternoon. Please choose a guy to go on a date with, and then get ready to leave the villa. #earlybird #pickofthepack_

_This is it_, you think to yourself. You’ve kept your plans to choose Noah at tonight’s recoupling a secret from everyone but Priya. She’s looking at you now, and it’s hard to tell if she’s just nervous or actually preparing herself for the apocalypse.

“Who’s it going to be, Jamie?” says Hope. There’s something undeniably snide in her voice.

You can feel the heat rising up your body and you thrum with nervous anticipation of the huge mess you’re about to make. You do your best to follow Marisol’s advice, to focus on that spot behind your bellybutton… but nothing. It doesn’t work. Your determination is intact, though, and you finally build up the courage to say, “Noah.”

There’s a sudden hush as everyone waits for Noah to react. A grin spreads across his face and he walks towards you. “I’d love to go on a date with you, Jamie.”

Hope steps forward before you can say anything else. “I just want to say that I’m totally fine with this.”

Lottie smirks. “Sounds like it.”

Hope shoots Lottie a look before continuing, “Noah and I are solid. While I don’t trust _you_, Jamie, I trust Noah to know where the boundaries are.”

Noah wraps his arm around Hope and pulls her into him, kissing her forehead. “Babe, it will be fine. It’s a date. We should both use this as a chance to spend some time with other people.”

He waits for you to leave, and then follows you towards the villa. “Don’t worry about Hope. She’ll be fine with it. Come on, babe. Let’s go get dressed up and drink wine in the daytime.”

* * *

The afternoon sun is behind you as you walk through a beautiful vineyard with Noah. A picnic hamper filled with wine and food is waiting on a table underneath the vines.

“This is a change of scenery, isn’t it? And it’s nice to have someone different to share it with, too.” He gestures at the table. “Shall we sit down?”

“Thank you,” you say. You both sit, and Noah begins to pour you both some wine.

You knew that today you had to knock it out of the park with your outfit. Looking like the side chick was not an option, so you chose a simple but elegant teal wraparound dress and strappy sandals. This date would be your best chance ahead of the recoupling to send Noah a message that you were the one rather than Hope.

He sets the bottle down on the tablecloth and looks at you. Immediately you sense that the energy between you has changed and become… heavy. Sexual. “I don’t think we’ve spent much time actually talking. I don’t know much about you. I know what you _like_, but I don’t know who you _are_.”

You’re stunned for a moment at how forward he’s being. “It can be hard to talk about anyone but Hope when she’s in the room,” you say.

He frowns at you, but only for a moment. There’s an awkward pause as he seems to be processing what you’ve said. Your own conflicting feelings are wrestling each other: on one hand, you’re enjoying the alone time with him away from Hope, but are you really? He’s being a bit of a prick.

Sometimes you wish you didn’t want to fuck him so much. But you do. You just want him to stop behaving like a cocky little bastard and be _real_ with you long enough for you to rip off his denim jacket, peel away the white t-shirt from his taut body, unzip the fly of his slim fit trousers and reach inside his elastic waistband for what you’ve wanted from him since your encounter in Jack’s bedroom almost six months ago.

He looks over the vineyard and says, “I’m just going to say it—this is kind of weird.”

“Maybe a bit.”

“But hey,” he says warmly, his gaze drifting back to you. “It’s a beautiful day, and we’re on a nice date. Let’s take a step back. What do you think about putting things between me and Hope to one side for a moment? We could just try to enjoy ourselves.”

“I’d like that.”

“Seriously though, I want to know more about you. When I last saw you, you were studying.”

“I’ve just finished a Masters in Occupational Therapy at LSBU,” you say.

“And now you’re on Love Island,” he says, chuckling. “You still doing those foodie videos with Becca?”

“They’re not really _foodie_ videos,” you say. “But yes, we’re still doing them.”

“I guess it’s time to start doing grownup stuff though, right? Now that you’ve finished school…” He stops to refill your glass and offers you some nibbles, momentarily oblivious to how taken aback you are.

“Uh…”

His face softens. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I’m feeling really nervous, Jamie. It’s like… I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t think it’s because we’re incompatible. I think it’s because we have this crazy chemistry, but now Hope’s in the picture, and I’m really confused. Can we start again?”

Your eyes meet and Noah smiles softly. You nod.

Noah shakes the last of the drops of wine into your glass, then leans forward, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. “I think we might be getting to the end of it, though. Which means it’s time for me to pop the big question.”

“Recoupling?”

“That’s the one,” he says. ”What are you thinking about the recoupling this evening?”

You inhale, goosebumps all over your arms and legs. _Here we go._ “I want to couple up with you, if that’s something you want to do?”

You look up from your glass to see Noah frowning. “I know I asked, but I wasn’t expecting you to say that,” he says.

“Are you taking the piss?”

Noah shrugs. “I’ve got to be honest. I’m definitely interested us spending some more time together, but I still really like Hope too. I think maybe we should feel this out a bit more, see where we go with it.”

“That’s fair,” you say. You can’t help but feel gutted, even though you haven’t been rejected outright, or even at all.

“I guess we’re out of time,” Noah says as he rummages through the empty hamper. “And snacks.”

You watch as Noah carefully picks up the empty bottle and the glasses and puts them back in the hamper. He takes your hand in his and walks you back to the villa.

* * *

The air in the dressing room is filled with excitement and a lemon-scented mist. You and the girls put the final touches to your makeup and hair as you prepare for tonights recoupling. The day has been both overwhelming and disappointing, and you want nothing more than to shrink down and go unnoticed by everyone in the room. Especially Hope.

“Lemon _anything_, am I right ladies?” says Priya.

“We know, Priya,” says Hope. “Everyone knows.”

“Bobby certainly knows,” says Marisol, smiling. “Why d’you think he was making lemonade this afternoon?”

Priya’s cheeks flush with colour and she shakes her head, seemingly eager to change the subject. “That’s rubbish. Hope, have you decided who you’re recoupling with, then?”

Hope fakes a laugh and rolls her eyes. “_Well_, I was thinking probably that boy Noah… unless Jamie has her eye on him,” she says, shooting you a look.

You catch her in the mirror as you’re placing your last hair pin. She’s _pissed._

As you’re packing up your stuff, you hear a knock on the door to the dressing room. “Hope you dinna mind girls, but I’d like to steal Jamie?” The voice is unmistakably Bobby’s.

“Just a minute,” you say, putting away the last of your makeup and hair products. You quickly slip into the hallway and together you begin making your way downstairs towards the fire pit.

“I wanted to pull you for a wee chat about the recoupling,” he says. “Mind if we go to the beanbags for a minute?”

You agree, and after a brisk walk across the lawn, you settle in.

“So, like, we havna really gotten a chance to speak properly today, just the two of us. I know ye had a date with Noah an’ everything, and I dinna mind that of course, but I need to be thinking of my place here in the villa,” he says.

“Oh, right,” you say with a sigh. “Soz, Bob. I didn’t think to talk to you about it. That was selfish of me.”

“Well, now ye know where my head’s at,” he says. “But how’d it go with Noah? Are we still good for tonight, or has he swept ye off your feet?”

“He doesn’t want me to pick him,” you say. You expected to feel more disappointed than you do. Instead, you just sort of feel… unsettled.

“Aw. He’s a pure tube, mate. At the end of the day I’m happy to stay coupled up with you of course, but any lad who has the chance to crack on with ye an’ doesn’t-”

A loud whistle from the fire pit cuts Bobby off. You glance over and Gary is waving you both over. “It looks like it’s time to go,” you say. Most of the girls have taken their seats around the fire pit and the the boys are arriving, jostling each other as they get into a line. Noah spots you and flashes you a smile. Your chest tightens. In moments like this you wish you could be normal, but instead you reflexively pretend not to notice. Awkward.

You and Bobby stand up together and start walking toward the fire pit in that familiar way, his arm draped around you, and you can’t help but wonder if you could ever feel this comfortable in Noah’s arms. Perhaps you’re destined to remain in an awkward no-man’s-land forever. You feel like you’ve been in limbo since you arrived in the villa, and if you’re being honest with yourself, you kind of want to get off.


	6. Chapter 6

You open your eyes to the darkness of the room. Bobby has cuddled up to you in the night, his gentle breath brushing against the back of your neck. It’s early enough that everyone is still sound asleep.

In the past 24 hours, the villa has become an explosion of fiery tempers, and for once the person at the centre of it all is not you. In fact, it feels like you’re one of the _only _people who have managed to steer clear of blame in the drama.

You’d been enjoying some time together with Lottie on the sun loungers. She’d been surprisingly non-judgemental about your date with Noah and was even willing to talk about it a little until Gary—who she was now coupled up with—had climbed out of the pool and waved her over. You hadn’t been alone long when you heard Bobby’s voice from steps behind you on one of the daybeds. “Jamie, come join us!”

You turned to look. Priya was also there, perched elegantly on the daybed next to Rahim, their knees touching and seeming very relaxed together. “Daybed double date!” she hissed, motioning for you to join them.

You weren’t sure what you’d been expecting when you sat down—probably just a bit of idle gossip—but you certainly hadn’t expected _this. _A whirlwind conversation in which Priya, Bobby, and Rahim convinced each other to conduct an experiment on Noah and Hope’s relationship to test how real it was. Priya was what she disingenuously termed the “sacrificial lamb”—the one who would be doing the dirty work of grafting on Noah—and she was absolutely buzzing about the project (codename: Operation Nope).

“Sorry guys, I can’t really get behind this plan,” you said, sounding a little more apologetic than you intended. It was one thing to move in on Noah because this was a game show and he’d demonstrated an interest in you, but quite another to entrap him “for science.” This felt like schoolgirl antics. You couldn’t help but feel disappointed in them—in Bobby most of all.

You also felt disappointed in yourself for agreeing not to tell anyone. You were complicit, now. Priya had been one of your best friends in the villa, but over the past few days you’d sensed a little distance and had even wondered if it was because she might have developed feelings for Noah, too. It was hard to imagine any other context in which Operation Nope made sense; hadn’t you been trying to turn Noah’s head since day dot?

In any case, your relationship with Priya being on unstable footing, you didn’t know quite how to say no and you stepped away feeling more uneasy than ever. But when you thought about talking to Hope about it, something didn’t feel quite right about that either. You were between a rock and a hard place because while you didn’t want to participate in subterfuge and manipulation, you didn’t want to actively defend what felt to you like a toxic relationship, either. So the only thing you could think to do was stay out of it entirely.

But in the villa, there’s no avoiding anything really, and even though you’d kept your distance from everyone involved all day, you still found yourself sucked into the vortex. Getting ready for the evening was painful with Hope, Priya, and Lottie all getting stroppy with each other about who did what with Noah (Priya had, in fact, executed Operation Nope and been summarily rejected).

The first light of dawn is beginning to peak through the gaps in the window shades now. A few the others will be waking up soon while the rest will remain dead to the world until the producers turn on the lights. Next to you, Bobby changes position and mumbles. He emits a low snuffle not unlike a French bulldog, then quickly settles back into a regular breathing rhythm. You roll over and close your eyes, hoping to get a little more sleep, but your mind is racing with yesterday’s events.

After the bickering in the dressing room, you had found Lottie evaluating the inventory of snacks in the kitchen. She peered into the fridge, shut it, and then examined the contents of a bowl on the kitchen island. At first she didn’t notice you standing there.

“Yes! Bombay mix!” she exclaimed under her breath, doing a little dance. “Dear little peanut, crunchy noodle, and rice puff… which to eat first?”

You casually cleared your throat, hoping to catch her attention. Lottie looked up at you and froze, but her expression quickly switched to one of indifference, and she said, “Oh, hey Jamie. I was just checking out the snacks…”

“Yes! Bombay mix!” you said enthusiastically. _Que sera sera._

“That’s so cute, you’re excited about Bombay mix,” she said in a slightly condescending tone. “_Anyways,” _she said, leaning into you so she could talk quietly.

You pretended to be folding napkins while she explained that she had seen Priya and Noah in the lounge area, and that she’d gone straight to Hope. “I’m still trying to sort out who knew what, when, and why. And why I was the last to know,” she said. “Besides Hope, I mean.”

Lottie sprinkled Bombay mix onto the counter and began arranging the different pieces into patterns. Lately, your feelings for Lottie have been changing a little. If you can look past her outer pig-headedness, there’s actually something really soft within her, and you can tell she’s fighting tooth and nail to keep it hidden. She’s like Bobby in her own way, and that similarity makes it difficult to know how much to say sometimes, especially when directly asked. In the kitchen last night you’d felt like you were in dangerous territory, but you had to take Lottie’s forlorn curiosity at face value and hope for the best.

“I don’t think anyone meant to keep anything from you. It’s just that sometimes you can be a little, um…” You pressed your lips together nervously, sensing that Lottie was growing tense, and feeling like you may have already fucked up your wording.

“You can say it. I don’t get offended easily.”

“It’s just… hard to know what we’ll get with you.”

Lottie narrowed her eyes. “In what sense?”

Each word you said made the situation worse. You already knew that you were terrible in high stakes conversations like these, and this time it was no different. It was like the thinking part of your brain had abandoned you, leaving you unable to access the roadmap you needed to successfully navigate the minefield. You released a heavy sigh, resigning yourself to having this conversation, regardless of the outcome. The atmosphere in the villa was already fucked for the night. “People might confide in you more often if you weren’t so moody.” _No. Fuck. Moody was absolutely the wrong word. I might has well have just asked if she was on her period._

Predictably, Lottie looked like she’d been stung. “I am not moody!” she snapped. “All I do here is try to be here for you girls!” She looked away from you, staring out over the pool.

“But… didn’t you run right to Hope about Priya without talking to anyone else first?”

“Of course I did. It was the right thing to do, and I’d do the same for you,” she said, turning back to you, her eyes welling up with tears.

In that moment you realized that from Lottie’s perspective, she _did_ do the right thing. Because she was closer to Hope than anyone else in the villa, and if you’d had that kind of relationship with Hope, you’d have told her, too.

“I’m really sorry, Lottie. Hope’s lucky to have you as a friend.”

“Thanks,” said Lottie, giving you a cryptic look and gently patting her eye with the back of her wrist. She then picked up a rice puff and crushed it between two fingers. “I guess I learned something, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I shouldn’t be so invested in other people’s drama. Tonight I’m going to focus on Gary. And-”

You feel a thump. _Wait a minute, is that…? _Yeah, it is. Suddenly a wave radiates through your body, igniting your skin and making your pussy throb. _Fanny flutters. What the fuck._

Bobby has rolled over, becoming the big spoon in his sleep. It’s happened a few times in the middle of the night since you’ve been coupled up with him—minus the morning wood and the fanny flutters, of course. You’ve never minded. Cuddling with Bobby has usually been welcome, though you would eventually poke him awake, call him a goof, and send him back to his side of the bed (with him cackling at having spooned you _again_)_. _But this was unexpected territory and it was weird, even if it was … weirdly sexy. _No, Jamie. What the fuck._ _What the FUCK_.

You’re not sure what to do at first. If there’s one thing you know about Bobby, it’s that he would brush the whole thing off and laugh while withering on the inside. You try shift yourself away without waking him, but it doesn’t help that you haven’t left yourself much room on your own side of the bed, and all you succeed in doing is grazing him through your red cotton pajama shorts. He groans in his sleep and lazily thrusts into you. _God_, there are pangs coursing through your bits and it’s making you feel like an unintentional predator. You finally manage to extricate yourself and, still stunned, run like the clappers (quietly) to the bathroom for a shower.

* * *

You set the shower to hot. Then cold. No wait, hot. You sigh. Love Island rules state that you mustn’t shower naked, and you have to admit that one thing you’re really looking forward to when you get home is having a shower without your swimming costume on.

The steam swirling around you takes on the scent of Kakadu plum as you massage shampoo into your hair. Normally a shower at the villa is a quick in-and-out affair with a long line of islanders waiting for a turn, but this isn’t the first time you’ve capitalized on an accidental early wake up. Shit, now you’re thinking about Bobby’s boner again. It’s not right!

Eventually you sit down in the shower stall and lean against the slick tiles, allowing the water to beat down on you. It’s like white noise for your skin—stimulating and relaxing at the same time. And when you close your eyes, all senses are sufficiently occupied and the intrusive thoughts (about Bobby’s boner—_fuck!_) leave you alone. Mostly. You can finally hear yourself think about things other than, you know, Bobby’s boner.

You hadn’t seen Priya on the lawn for some time after the argument in the dressing room, and you suspected that she had probably pulled Bobby for a chat because, now that you thought about it, you hadn’t seen him either. Tension remained high between the islanders in the aftershocks of Operation Nope and it made sense that Bobby and Priya might want to be away from the others. While you were sitting with Marisol on the beanbags, Brad had approached you and sent you up to the roof terrace for a “chat” with them. As you followed the hallway toward the dressing room, you began to hear them speaking in low voices.

“I’m similar,” said Bobby. “That’s why I joke around so much.” You tilted your head and paused for just a brief moment, not intending to eavesdrop, but there was something about what Bobby said that had rattled you.

“I try that, but it falls flat…”

“Because of how ye feel about yourself?”

Even though you knew that none of this was about you, you couldn’t help but feel a little bit hurt. What was it about Priya that made it so easy for Bobby to open up?

You considered turning back. Bobby seemed to have the situation in hand, but you knew that in this game, when the producers sent you for a chat, you didn’t really have a choice but to “clarify the narrative.” So you made your way forward quickly to the roof terrace, trying to avoid hearing any more of what was clearly a private conversation.

You gingerly stepped onto the roof terrace, feeling like an interloper and unsure as to whether or not you would be welcome there. Bobby and Priya were sitting close together on one of the benches. Bobby had nicked a bottle of cheap prosecco that the producers had forgotten to remove from the fridge downstairs and had poured Priya a little glass.

Bobby looked up and nodded. “Haw, Jamie. Fit like?”

“Mind if I join you?” you asked tentatively, leaning against the doorframe. You quickly adjusted your mic set while looking directly at them—this small act had become code among the islanders for “the producers sent me.”

Bobby and Priya looked at each other. There was an awkward pause and you felt the knot in your stomach beginning to grow.

“Ehm, Priya already feels bad, Jamie.” His tone seemed to warn against kicking off anymore drama, which is surely what “clarify the narrative” meant.

“I was worried about Priya. I wanted to make sure she was okay. And you, too.”

“Dinna worry about me, lass, but I think Priya feels a lot of people are upset with her.”

Priya looked gratefully at Bobby. You joined them on the cushions, with Bobby sitting between the two of you. Priya dabbed carefully at her eyes, her tissue dotted with smokey grey and muted red smudges. Her gaze remained in her lap when she spoke to you. “Thanks for not telling Hope. Turns out everyone knew what I was up to, though,” she said, sighing.

“I admit I spoke to the lads about it. And Lottie told Hope she saw ye take Noah for a chat in the lounge.”

“In the end, it doesn’t matter what you all did or didn’t say.” Her hands began to tremble again as she searched for a clean spot on the tissue and pressed it gently to her eyes. “Noah told her everything.”

Bobby put his arm around Priya and gave her a squeeze.

“What happened when you got him alone?” you asked.

Priya slouched down into the seat, buried her face in her palms, and groaned. She was shaking as she spoke. “I’m so embarrassed. I went for a kiss, but he totally dodged it. It was so awkward.”

“Oof,” you said.

“I guess he told Hope about it immediately,” she said, looking out over the lawn below.

Bobby glanced at you. “I came clean about the Operation Nope thing and what I said about them. I didna want Priya takin’ all the blame. Which means Hope knows ye weren’t involved, Jamie.”

“Thanks,” you say gratefully. “I reckon all we can do now is focus on our own couples and be better mates to each other.”

“Yeah, I’d like to work on getting closer with Rahim. If he can get over how I’ve behaved, that is…”

Suddenly you hear a knock on the shower door. Your eyes snap open. Oh, _fuck._

Through the steam, you see Noah peek his head around the shower door and look down at you. “Jamie, are you… sitting in the shower?” he says.

“Um, yeah. It’s a thing I do sometimes,” you say awkwardly. _Oh, PISS. _You are officially Bridget fucking Jones.

“Right, okay. Well, when you’re done…” he trails off.

“Yeah, I’m done,” you say, quickly standing up and grabbing your basket of shower stuff. You feel faint from the steam and stumble out of the shower like a hot mess—forgetting to turn off the faucet—as Noah looks on in bewilderment.

It’s still early, but by the time you’re in your yellow floral bikini with your hair dry and braided, most of the islanders are at least awake. Bobby is already up and about making pancakes in a gesture of apology to the group.

“Morning sunshine,” he says as you make your way towards the kitchen. He looks at you a little strangely and says, “You alright?”

“Weight, 138lbs… cigarettes, 3… birthday, 33,” you mumble.

For a moment Bobby looks at you like you’ve gone insane (and you probably have), but then snorts with laughter, apparently getting the reference. He throws his arms up, flinging pancake batter across the kitchen, and belts out, “I can’t liiiiiiiiiive if livin’ is without yooooou, I can’t _liiiiiiiiiive…_”

_It’s been a weird 24 hours_, you think to yourself, catching a glimpse of his purple trunks.


	7. Chapter 7

“Listen. I have something I need to talk to you about privately. It’s been killing me. I know I can trust you.”

Without words you pick up your water bottle and nod, following Priya down the wooden steps toward the lawn. This is something serious. She looks more unsettled than you’ve ever seen her before. Could this be about the kiss with Noah? You can’t think of anything else going on in the villa right now, but it does seem an odd choice to speak with _you_ about it rather than Marisol.

You finally settle into the beanbags. Just the two of you. Her brow furrows and she’s not saying anything. You’re beginning to wonder whether something more serious had happened with him last night than she’d let on, and you’re not sure how to feel about it. Something _must _have happened, no? Whatever it is, it’s clearly causing her tremendous upset—so much so that she’s actually speechless. You look towards Noah, resting contentedly on the daybeds with Hope as if nothing was amiss yesterday. A burning sensation creeps into your chest. You look back to Priya.

Finally she sighs and says, “I snogged Bobby on the terrace last night. Minutes before you showed up.”

The burning intensifies. “Wait, _what? _Bobby too?”

She stiffens, lip curling in annoyance. “Thanks for the judgement, Mary Poppins.”

_Whoops. Bollocks. _“No, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just surprised because, well… I kind of thought you might fancy Noah after Operation Nope.”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t,” she says, her posture softening. “I don’t really know how I feel about any of this. Bobby did kiss me back, if you’re wondering. But he stopped it pretty quickly.”

_Gobsmacked._ “Wow,” you say, looking over at Bobby across the lawn. He must be really confused today. He’s in the gym area with Rahim (Oh, poor Rahim…) and it looks like he’s trying to bench press Gary? From here you can see that his face is flushed with effort, but he quickly gives in and drops Gary to the ground with all three of them laughing. He looks and catches your eye, almost doing a double-take. As he pauses, probably wondering what you and Priya are talking about, you notice a dusting of flour in his dreads from making breakfast. He waves at you like it’s nothing and returns to the boys.

“Has he said anything about me since the night I coupled up with Rahim?” Priya says tentatively.

What would Bobby want you to say? You can't be sure. Priya’s hurt him before. She was putting everything into him for about 24 hours until all of a sudden she was putting it all into Rahim. It was like a switch had flipped and she was suddenly gone without warning leaving Bobby totally crushed. And now she's hurt Rahim, too. For Noah. Her feelings are all over the place. You feel suddenly protective of Bobby, but you know that what he does is not up to you.

"Jamie?"

“Yeah, sorry. I mean, I don’t want to speak out of turn. But if you like Bobby, you should tell him.”

Just then you hear Hope call out, “Guys, I got a text!” as she waves her phone in the air.

The islanders gather by the daybeds and Henrik is practically peering over her shoulder at the screen. “What’s it say, what’s it say, what’s it say?!”

“Love your enthusiasm, babes, but I’d like my personal space bubble back please.” Looking around to make sure everyone is listening, she reads the text aloud. “Islanders, tonight the villa will be hosting a Ministry of Sound Party. Make sure you all dress to impress! Hashtag pure beats, hashtag Ministry of Sound!”

* * *

_August 2018—_

And just like that, it was over. Nine years. You were numb.

It had happened two days ago, the evening of your aunt Sarah’s wedding. You’d felt like such an asshole during the family brunch at the hotel restaurant the next morning. You did your best to be same old Jamie, smiling and chatty with everyone, but whenever your mind wandered, your mask fell off leaving you sullen-faced over your pancakes. You hadn’t intended to tell anybody what had happened because the last thing you wanted was to make a wedding event about you, but Sarah had eventually pulled you aside and dragged it out of you. On the bright side, she had come equipped not only with hugs, but with Visine and superior makeup skills to your own.

You were on the train back to London now, trying to read a book but your eyes kept drifting off the page. After attempting the same paragraph for the third time, you closed it and put it back in your backpack.

Your dad had been in fine form that night. He’d been complaining about the cost of parking, taking digs at the wedding for being non-traditional, and accusing your brother Max of skiving off at work that day. Dad could find anything to whinge on about, especially when he was drunk. He had been pre-drinking in the back room of Cooper’s Treasure hunt (the family business) and was off his trolley by the time he finished his second Prosecco. Mum wasn’t helping—she kept the alcohol flowing in his direction and encouraged his snide remarks by taking them seriously.

You were used to this. It had been strong motivation for leaving Reading, but you’d gotten better at gritting your teeth and bearing it when necessary.

Ben was understandably embarrassed and had left the table. But it wasn’t just embarrassment. After nine years together he didn’t know much about your family dynamics that he hadn’t picked up on by himself; Ben had little capacity for talking about feelings unless they were superficial and his own. Now that some time had passed since your breakup, you were realizing that when you tried to talk about how you were feeling, he usually had some way of turning the conversation back towards himself or otherwise cutting you off.

When you stood up to remove the alcohol from the table, Dad targeted you and the fact that you hadn’t come home for the summer to work atTreasure Hunt. You’d been rehearsing for that one since you before you left London, and calmly but firmly announced your refusal to engage.

As you took hold of the half-finished bottle of prosecco he began raging on about how family was supposed to be _loyal_ to each other. Loyalty was the cost of Mum and Dad’s approval, but the only thing consistent about their definition of loyalty was that it entailed getting from you what they wanted. In any case, that was it for Max who drunkenly called Dad a wanker (and you couldn’t help but love him for it) prompting two muscular men in black uniforms to quietly remove the both of them from the venue to “get some air.” Apparently, hotel security had been forewarned about the Rodney and Joanne Cooper table. You were hardly surprised. Nor were you surprised that the extra seats had been left unfilled when planning the seating arrangements. Sarah and Clare, her fiancée, probably didn’t want to expose their loved ones to one of Dad’s rants about “the gays.”

You went looking for Ben but couldn’t find him anywhere. You were beginning to feel the first twinges resentment towards him for walking away from you but you stuffed them back, determined not to stop yourself from celebrating. You threw your head back and danced to the Spice Girls, putting to one side the bullshit you knew you’d be facing once you figured out wherever it was that Ben had gone.

The two of you had booked a hotel room for the night, partially for convenience as it was attached to the wedding venue, but also to have a bit of privacy for yourselves. It was after midnight when you found yourself there, Ben never having returned to the party. He was laying in bed, a little bit drunk and playing computer games on his laptop. You didn’t know how to feel when you saw him. Part of you was upset, but the other part wanted to collapse into him because honestly, the night had been so hard already and you just needed a hug. Ben had always been good at hugs. When he could be present with you, anyways.

It took a moment for him to look up. Almost a minute for him to acknowledge your arrival with more than a raised finger, as if it had the power to stop time until his game ended. You stood there in stasis, holding onto your gunmetal stilettos by their heel straps, feeling your entire body become tense.

The argument was a blur. “I didn’t want to be there, Jamie,” he had said, as if it had been a picnic for you to be trapped at a table trying to prevent your dysfunctional family from making a scene at a wedding.

“Look. I know this isn’t your battle, but I’m supposed to be your partner. It wasn’t right for you to just leave me hanging without at _least_ sending me a text-”

“I did what I needed to do. It was in my own rational self-interest for me to-”

“Don’t bring your bloody Ayn Rand shit into this, Ben.”

“You could have left too.”

“Could I?” you said in disbelief, shaking your head. “They had to bring in security!”

“Jamie, calm down. This is too much. You’re being… too much.”

And there it was. You’d heard it before, but today it didn’t just roll off your back. That single exchange had triggered an epiphany: You had always been too much for Ben. Too happy, too anxious, and too quick to tears. Too sensitive. Too excited about things he wasn’t interested in. He always seemed to want to flatline your emotions into something he found easier to manage. While you certainly believed that he loved you, you hadn’t gotten the sense that he actually _liked_ you in ages. And you knew then that it was over.

You looked down at the beige carpet to hide the fact that your eyes were welling up with tears. “This isn’t working anymore, Ben.”

He froze. “Jamie…”

You paused to gather yourself a moment, then looked to him, willing your tears to stay contained. “It’s not working for me anymore and it hasn’t for a long time.”

Ben hung his head and sighed softly. “I know.”

You slept together that night knowing that it would be the last time, and even now, stepping off the train into Ealing Broadway station, you didn’t regret it. You walked towards the tube, knowing that in about 30 minutes you’d be back at your flat with Becca (who was already on her way), Haagen Dazs, and the whole series of Peep Show to marathon together. You felt empowered at the prospect of a wallow: you were staring this breakup in the face, knowing that you’d come out of it on the other side a couple of kilos heavier and free to be more yourself than ever.

* * *

The sign reads “Pancake Day.” You had suspected that a challenge was on the horizon. Just yesterday you’d glimpsed a small group of builders coming up the back road toward the outside gardens, and if history was anything to go by, it meant they were preparing the challenge area. But _Pancake Day_… this is definitely a grossout challenge. You’re just hoping you don’t throw up on telly in front of the nation.

It’s been at least thirty minutes since the islanders had done what would become in post-production the standard “slow-motion run” to the challenge site, and everyone is just waiting around now while the staff make final adjustments to lighting and set. Priya is giving Rahim an impromptu dance lesson to pass the time, and you catch Bobby staring off into space in their direction. The silence between you is too unsettling. “Want me to teach you the robot?” you blurt out.

“Friend mode activated,” he replies in a monotone robot voice with a butchered American accent. “Sorry lass. I appreciate the sentiment but I dinna dance.”

Bobby had grabbed your hand for the jog over from the villa as he had for every other challenge, but today something felt different about it. You’re not sure if it was the morning wood or finding out about his kiss with Priya or some combination of the two, but it was as if you were set alight by an uncomfortable spark hopping from his hand to yours, bee-lining to your stomach and raising goosebumps along the way. The fact that you had an activity to focus on (running while being totally extra in a bikini and shouting “Woohooo!”) helped you to avoid being too weird—that is, until you tripped over your own feet and faceplanted in the grass. No re-shoot on that one. _Great. _You can picture the commentary now.

Five small tables have been set up along each side of the deck, each with a single chair and place setting. On one side the plates are empty, but on the other side they’re piled high with pancakes and a mug of presumably tepid coffee. This challenge is obviously going to involve food going from one person’s mouth into another.

“You lot ready for more pancakes?” Bobby says gleefully as the rest of the islanders groan.

You’re not left long to your own devices, though, and before you know it, the challenge has begun and Bobby is charging towards you, his eyes crinkling with delight. He’s desperately struggling not to laugh, having filled his cheeks to near bursting with coffee. Your lips connect and bitter coffee, warmed to body temperature, begins streaming into your mouth. You cough and sputter, coffee spraying out of you, but after a moment Bobby holds you steady and soon you’re both running back towards your tables.

“Thanks a latte!” he shouts, cackling behind you.

You clap your palm over your mouth and just barely make it to the table, managing to spit almost half of it into the cafeteria-style mug before your chest heaves and, no longer able to hold it in, you release the most graceless laugh you’ve ever heard in your life.

By the time the buzzer sounds to end the challenge, something in you has changed. The sick feeling you’d had in your stomach as you waited for the challenge to begin has all but disappeared, a casualty of adrenaline, endorphins, and Bobby’s relentless quest to make you laugh (and possibly himself too all things considered). His childlike playfulness is infectious. It feels like he’s drawing something out of you, pulling the loose thread in your reticence and unraveling it before your very eyes. You haven’t felt this light-hearted since you arrived at the villa. Since before that, even. Since the euphoria and newfound freedom that lived between the waves of grief in those early days after your breakup with Ben. It feels like you and Bobby are back to being best friends again. Back to normal. A new normal, perhaps.

He drapes his arm around you, breathing heavily from the exercise and sticky with syrup. “It’s no about who wins or loses, yeah?” he says, glancing at your plate. Considering how much pancake was strewn along the route between your two tables, you and Bobby had clearly finished last.


	8. Chapter 8

The villa garden had been transformed for the Ministry of Sound party. Fairy lights and luminous globes hang everywhere, bathing the scene in twinkling gold. You'd been so excited (and a little starstruck) to see DJ Big T when you stepped out onto the lawn with the others, and he was chuffed to be back in the villa too. He was on Love Island last season, and if you’re honest, you still have a bit of a crush on him. Bobby’s been teasing you about it since he saw it written all over your face.

Despite the party atmosphere, the islanders are dancing in small groups on the dance floor—a clue to the reality that the villa is still divided over everything that’s happened over the past two days. You find yourself irritated to see Priya dancing with Bobby (in front of Rahim no less). You still don't know if Rahim knows about the kiss, but from the way he keeps glancing at her, you get the sense that he at least suspects something's up.

You've been trying to avoid the drama by staying away from the most dramatic players since the grossout challenge, and as a result, you now know more about Victorian baking trends than you ever thought you would. You'd come into the party buzzing about a plan that you and Bobby had come up with to collaborate on a video after all of this was over, but now that you're here at the party, you feel on edge. You've always been the type to read a room and absorb what's there. For better or for worse.

You help yourself to a little more champagne and settle into the biggest group where Marisol, Lottie, Rahim, Gary, and Henrik are attempting to chat and dance at the same time.

Marisol dances a little closer to you. “So what happened today with these two?” she says, disco-pointing at Priya, and then at Hope, disguising it as dance moves. “Are they still avoiding each other?”

“I’m not going to gossip anymore,” says Lottie.

“Yeah right, Lottie. Do we need to beg for details?” says Gary, rolling his eyes.

Lottie stops dancing and looks defiantly at Gary. “No, I mean it. I need to make better decisions about how I treat people here. In fact…” she says. Her fingers curl into fists and you’re suddenly not so sure that whatever she’s got in mind is a great idea. She separates from the group and marches towards Priya and Bobby.

You watch with trepidation from a distance knowing that if Lottie blows this up, you’re the one who’ll be asked to step in to smooth it over. Again. Priya stops mid-twirl as Lottie approaches and slides back into Bobby, keeping a measured distance.

“Here’s how I see it,” Lottie blurts out rather gruffly. Her posture is still rigid with tension. It really doesn’t help that no matter what Lottie is feeling—anxious, scared, sad, or even excited—on the outside she looks like she’s going to bite your head off. “We all have to live with each other in here,” she bellows, “which means drama like this needs to get resolved. And the way we do that is by talking.”

“Woah, Lottie. We can save this for later, no? We’re supposed to be relaxing and having fun,” says Bobby. There's a tentative edge in his voice, as if he doesn't know how to straddle the line between being protective and keeping the peace.

“Ugh,” says Lottie. It comes out in a low growl, sounding almost helpless with frustration. After a moment her fists unclench and she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m not very good at this. I’m here to apologize for being a hypocrite-”

Suddenly, you hear Marisol’s voice ring out amid murmurs in the group. “There are two of them!” You turn to look as two new islanders emerge on the garden path.

But Priya’s already noticed—especially the new boy. You can tell from the way he’s striding towards the group that he’s cocky, and as he gets closer you can see it in his eyes, too. He’s massive and _screams_ steroids, squeezed into a blue button-down shirt and white skintight jeans as if they were sausage casings. There’s something about him that rubs you the wrong way.

“Hi ladies,” he says, “I’m Jakub.”

The girl, Chelsea, beams with excitement. “I can’t believe I’m here!” she says, tiny waisted but curvy and wearing baby pink athletic gear. Her eyes catch yours as if she’s noticing you for the first time and she practically leaps towards you, arms out for a hug.

Her enthusiasm for you is bewildering and catches you off guard. But then you remember that in some ways you’re not a stranger to her. It’s become easy to forget where you are over the past 12 days—being on Love Island you’re proper famous now, and your antics in the villa are probably on the sidebar of the Daily Mail every day the same way they have been for cast members from previous years. Your borderline desperate behaviour to steal Noah is water cooler chat and the thought settles uncomfortably in your gut like glue, gumming up your insides.

But Chelsea is a fast mover and by the time you ground yourself back in reality you find yourself hugging her back. She squeezes you tight, and she’s practically sparkling with unbridled enthusiasm. It’s contagious. She’s like Bobby in that way. And even though this whole introduction has been a little much, you can’t help but _like_ her right off the bat.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Jamie! It feels like I know you already! We’ve seen every episode so far,” she says.

“You’ve been watching us?” says Hope, tilting her head and looking more than a little concerned.

“Of course,” says Jakub. “And let me just say one thing. If the boys here aren’t up for the challenge of a _real_ woman like Priya, I am.” You groan, crinkling your nose in distaste. Your gut has always been pretty reliable when it comes to picking out arrogant alpha-male types. Lads dripping with toxic machismo and clichéd opinions on women that could only have originated in the mind of someone who viewed them as two-dimensional. Jakub gives you a saucy wink and bites his tongue, looking like a predator caged by polite company.

Priya doesn’t seem to be fazed by any of this. “What else did you guys see?” she says eagerly, stepping away from Bobby. You and Rahim make eye contact. He presses his lips together and shakes his head sadly. There’s no more denying it—her words on the terrace last night had been meaningless. Rahim’s merely an afterthought now and he knows it.

“A _lot_!” Chelsea squeals. “I have so many opinions. But I think the big thing was that kiss.”

Hope suddenly turns to Noah, fear muddling with anger in her expression. “What kiss?”

“I don’t know,” says Noah.

“Did you kiss Priya and lie to me?”

“I told you, no! Stop accusing me of things!” says Noah through his teeth, jaw clenched. You’ve never seen him this pissed off before. You feel kind of bad for him, but empathizing with emotionally unavailable men has always been your Achilles heel. If you allow yourself to empathize with him too much, all of the resolve you've been building over the past few days to keep your distance will unravel, so you look toward Bobby to distract yourself.

You’re the only one who seems to notice how uncomfortable he is amidst the nervous silence that's overcome the group. The others are looking expectantly at Chelsea, but Bobby seems downright guilty, hands in his pockets and digging at the astroturf with his military green boat shoes.

Lottie’s eyes sweep over to you, then to Priya. She sighs heavily. “I kissed Gary. Right after Hannah got dumped.” The truth comes down like a hammer and for a moment the group stands in shocked silence.

“Bruh…” says Rahim, shaking his head in disbelief.

One by one, the islanders turn to stare at Lottie. The base of Marisol’s champagne flute hits the table with a thud. “So it _was_ you who Gary kissed after the recoupling? Thought as much.”

“Wait,” says Bobby. “I thought this was already a known thing, no? We read out those tweets after all…”

“Funny how we all seemed to just let it go,” says Priya snidely.

Lottie’s face reddens, and just as she’s about to speak, Jakub cuts in. “What’s all this then? I thought we were having a party, and I’ve got some fit girls I wanna get chirpsing with.”

“Yeah… I think maybe we should give these guys some space,” says Rahim.

“Smart idea,” says Marisol, picking up her glass. “I’m not in the mood to have my evening ruined.”

“All my party people, on me!” Jakub yells, breaking into an energetic jog. Without waiting for a reply, he disappears off towards the villa. The other islanders follow him, except for Gary who starts walking over to Lottie. Noah shakes his head and catches him by the arm, leading him away.

Soon, it’s just you, Priya, Chelsea, and Lottie. There’s a moment of silence.

Priya's cheeks are flushed now. She tries to gather her breath for a moment, then shoots Lottie a glare. “So you’re telling me that after all your ranting about girl code, and after everything you’ve said about me, this whole time you were just sitting on the fact that you’d kissed this guy that your best friend wanted, not even hours after she was out of the picture?”

“Yep, that’s totes what it looked like to me, babes,” says Chelsea unhelpfully. Perhaps you were wrong about her.

“It was one kiss,” says Lottie, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Yeah? Well, I haven’t kissed anyone I wasn’t supposed to but somehow I’m still the bad guy in your eyes. How does that even work?”

You cough loudly. _Bloody hell_, should you say something?

“That’s bullshit, babes, and you know it,” says Lottie, her expression pinched in anger. “I know what happened between you and Bobby on the roof terrace. How does Rahim feel about that?”

Priya swallows hard and her chin begins to tremble. As she looks at you, her eyes accuse you of betrayal without her needing to say a word.

“It wasn’t me,” you say, holding up your hands. “I promise, Priya.”

“Then it was Bobby,” she says, defeated. She slumps down onto the deck and buries her face in her hands. You, Lottie, and Chelsea all sit down on the deck steps. You're trying to stay in the moment while Priya and Lottie bicker amongst themselves, but something is niggling at you and you can’t figure out what it is. When did Bobby and Lottie get so close? Why hadn’t he told _you_ about the kiss?

Bobby is your rock in this villa—your friendship with him has always felt more solid than it had with any of the girls. But it’s always been a little lopsided. You confide in him, he confides in the other girls, and it’s left you wondering if maybe you’ve misread how close you really are. Maybe you’re just the kind of friends who have fun together, and you’ve been chasing a closeness that he doesn’t really want. The same way you’ve been chasing Noah. There’s a heaviness inside you, radiating outward from your stomach. You’ve been too much for everyone here. Just like always. Too much.

There’s a loud splash. You glance over and see the others jumping into the infinity pool, laughing and splashing around. They seem miles away from the torture chamber of escalating drama you're stuck in with the girls. Your heart is pounding suddenly and your entire body feels hot. This isn't going to stop unless you make it stop. It's like you're back at that bloody fucking wedding, with Dad and Max shouting over each other, and it's your job to smooth it over to protect everyone else from the collateral damage of your family's existence. But you can't do it anymore, you just can't. And you shut it all out. Quiet and blackness.

After a second or two you open your eyes to see Lottie, Priya and Chelsea looking at you strangely.

"Um, Jamie?" says Chelsea. "Are you okay?"

She sounds oddly muffled and quiet until you realize that you've covered your ears. You lower your hands, stomach plummeting in embarrassment. "Yeah, sorry guys. I don't know what that was. Tinnitus or something," you lie.

Chelsea cocks her head at you. "Okay..." She's perceptive, that girl. You can feel it.

Lottie is also staring at you, occasionally glancing back at Priya who has stopped crying but just looks, well, sad. "You know Priya," she says, continuing to look between the two of you, her face creased with worry. "I think I've gotten carried away again. I don't even know how it happens. I just can't handle fighting with people, so I should probably follow through on that being less of an asshole thing."

“Ugh, me too,” says Priya, gently dabbing the corner of her eyes with the sides of her fingers. "I haven't exactly been the Dalai Lama.”

“Anyways, before Jakub and Chelsea showed up I was coming to apologize for being a hypocrite.” She glances again at you and you feel annoyed at yourself. There’s nothing more disempowering than being a cause for concern.

Priya pauses, sniffling. Lottie tentatively reaches for her hand. She hesitates, but doesn’t pull away.

“Thanks, Lottie. I do still wanna talk about how things have been between us, though. I want us to be friends, but to be honest, I’m having a hard time trusting you. You really do need to stop attacking me all the time. Neither of us is better or worse than the other.”

“Yes, I agree. Can we start over?”

“Okay,” says Priya, looking down at her palms. “And I’m sorry for concealing what happened with Bobby last night. It was dishonest of me.” The two girls lean across the steps and hug. Their tentative embrace tells you that they don’t trust each other quite yet, but they’re well on their way.

* * *

You held on at the party for as long as you could. That feeling in your stomach wasn’t going away and while you had goofed off enough to convince Lottie and Priya at least that everything was fine, eventually you just needed to get out of there. Bobby had asked if you were okay, and you reassured him saying something about your sensitive stomach, and that you just needed the loo. You couldn’t think of any other way to keep him (or the crew) from following you. You didn’t want this to be part of the “narrative," nor did you want Bobby to comfort you _again_.

And now you're sat on the upstairs toilet because this is the only place without cameras, feeling sick but not from the food. The stress of this place… it hasn't let up since you got here, and you know that a lot of it is your own doing. You pull your knees up to your chest and hug them. A shudder rattles through your body and you let go of your tears, utterly humiliated, allowing them to roll off your cheekbones and onto the floor.

It's not too long before you feel yourself begin to relax. Your tears have done their job of consoling you. You soak a face cloth in cold water and hold it against your eyes to calm down the puffiness. And after a few minutes, you squeeze a couple of drops of Visine in your eyes. If you get into bed now, nobody will ever know.


	9. Chapter 9

“I’m not a gorilla.”

“You totes are! Look at you.”

Gary and Chelsea’s voices are the first things you hear as you wake. The lights in the room have already flicked on for the day, and somehow you’d slept through it. In fact, you’d slept like the dead all night, thank god. It’s going to be a better day today. You feel alive, grounded, and grateful that the girls seem to have forgotten your embarrassing little meltdown last night. At least you’re telling yourself they did.

You sit up in bed and shield your eyes, glancing at Gary who is looking himself over.

“You’re so big. Not to mention _hairy_,” says Chelsea. Lottie grins in amusement as she snuggles into Gary’s side.

“Like a sexy gorilla?” you add, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. It feels scratchy and oddly satisfying.

“I’ll take that.”

“She’s not wrong, Big G. It’s like you’ve got a full body halo going on,” says Bobby, who’s already out of bed, wrapped in a fluffy white towel and spraying his underarms with anti-perspirant. “A fuhbalo.”

Lottie quirks an eyebrow. “Um, did you just try to squash ‘full-body halo’ together into one word?”

“Aye,” he says, pulling his purple trunks up beneath his towel.

“I thought Scotsmen weren’t supposed to wear anything under those,” you say.

Bobby rolls his eyes back as far as they’ll go and theatrically pulls away the towel. “Hoping to catch a glimpse of my fuhbalo, were ye, lass?” he says to the groans of everyone in the room.

“Mate, that should be one of our words!” says Rahim.

Bobby shakes his head. “Fuhbalo? Nah.” 

“Aww,” says Rahim. “Why not?”

“I dunno…” Bobby rubs his chin in thought. “It’s lacking something. A certain _je ne sais quois._ Panache. Now, that could work…”

“What’s going on, lads? You’ve lost me,” says Gary.

Chelsea breaks out into cackling laughter and claps her hands. “Oh, I know! I know! They’re making up words to prank the new islan-” She stops short, frowning, apparently realizing that she may have just blown it.

You look around. Jakub is nowhere to be seen, and a few other beds are empty, too. Noah’s still asleep but the place beside him is empty. 

“Where’s Hope?” you ask, but nobody seems to notice. When Henrik and Lucas first arrived, Hope had gotten away with grafting on them behind Noah’s back—a breathtaking double-standard considering how jealous and possessive she was being about Noah. She’d headed you off at the pass multiple times, both publicly and privately, having designated herself a gatekeeper to Noah’s attention even though Noah was clearly interested in getting to know you, too.

You’d called her on it after seeing how flirty she was on her date with Lucas, but it was like you were speaking in a vacuum of awareness. Hope belligerently shut you down and nobody else believed you because, at less than a week in, Noah and Hope had inexplicably achieved cult status as an elite power couple despite how obviously toxic they were together. Hope had expertly manipulated the situation and turned it around so that you were the bad guy. It had been a good lesson for you though, and since then you’ve been trying to stay in your own lane. To focus on your own relationship with Noah rather than hers. At least, you _were_ until you started keeping your distance from him.

“So we’re pranking Jakub then?” says Gary.

“Oh my days! Yes yes yes!” says Chelsea, clapping enthusiastically.

“Let’s do it,” you say, “but I need the loo. I’ll be back in a minute.” You’re still curious about Hope and not only can you not shake your suspicions, you can’t resist a little private investigation, either. Your brain won’t leave the subject alone.

You make your way to the upstairs toilet, bee-lining it for the window that looks out over the lawn. You peer outside to see Hope and Priya hanging around the gym with Jakub. They seem to be captivated by whatever he’s saying. There’s something sort of titillating about the whole thing, you realize, and for a moment it makes you feel a bit shit about yourself.

But nevertheless, you can’t stand the fact that nobody can really see Hope for the villain she is, and that her relationship with Noah somehow passes as normal (or even adorable) to the uninvolved islanders. Bobby is the only one who can really see it for what it is, but even he’s more motivated to keep the peace than declare it publicly. In any case, you know it’ll all come out when the islanders watch the series back. The whole thing is sparking a rather ugly part of yourself that you’ve been trying to restrain since you got here: the self-appointed underdog who gets off on triumphing over those she's handed her power to.

Your jaw tightens and you shake your head. _Stop it, Jamie. You’ve worked so hard to stop being this way_, you think, feeling that all-too-familiar flicker behind your eyes when you know you’re about start thinking your way into a black hole_._ A small inheritance when your oldest brother died had paid for the couple years of trauma therapy and piles of self-help books that helped you begin the journey of clawing your way out of that hole—a place that can suck you in so deep that your reality becomes warped. In this artificial paradise environment where you’re surrounded by cameras and hidden motivations, you’re finding it harder and harder to stay out of it.

You take a deep breath and picture yourself in a cozy little tree house, high up in a tree in the middle of a wood that doesn’t exist anywhere but your own mind. You’re curled up on the biggest, softest beanbag you can imagine with Moss, the seven year old tabby cat you’d adopted on your birthday a couple of months after your breakup with Ben. You feel at ease with him there purring rhythmically on your stomach and slowly tap the sides of your legs in time, left-right-left-right, until the calm really settles in.

Allowing yourself one final look, you see that Priya is gone now, leaving Hope alone with Jakub. You step away from the window and make your way back downstairs, each step feeling cool against the soles of your bare feet. The others are still discussing the prank. You smile to yourself. _It’s not so bad here_.

Bobby notices you as you round the corner into the bedroom and his amber eyes light up like a pinball machine. “Ding!”

* * *

You’re crossing the garden towards the beanbags with Marisol. With six of the islanders out for a couple of hours, it’s relatively quiet at the villa. It’s just you, Bobby, Gary, Lottie, Noah, and Marisol.

Unsurprisingly, Jakub chose Hope for a date. What _was_ surprising was that Noah hadn’t looked bothered at all. In fact, even now you can see him and Gary laughing together on the sun loungers while Lottie does one of her tea readings. He notices you looking from across the garden and smiles at you. As you smile back at him, you spot Bobby running up to you, grinning and waving. There’s something a little frenetic about him.

“Can I pull ye for a wee chat, Jamie?” he says once he reaches you, out of breath.

You glance at Marisol who’d been in the middle of complaining about Chelsea choosing Henrik as one of her dates for the day only moments before.

“Not interrupting anything, am I?” Bobby says.

“Oh, no. Not at all,” says Marisol to Bobby, smiling lightly. She touches your arm and says “I could murder a bag of crisps anyways. Come find me later.”

“Magic. Thanks, Marisol,” he says as she makes her way to the kitchen, leaving the two of you alone. He turns to you. “Bean bags?”

“You have my attention.”

Bobby gestures politely at the pink beanbag for you to sit in and plops down next to you. He stretches out, the sun highlighting the splash of deep brown freckles on his chest and shoulders. “Ahh. Sun, pool, and astroturf. The good life.”

“What, like… sun, sea, and sand?”

“Aye, the exact same. Though my version doesna have quite the same ring to it, does it?”

You chuckle. “Well, not really. But from where I’m sitting, it’s still pretty good.”

Bobby sits in silence for a moment, tickling the astroturf with the pads of his long, slender fingers. You hadn’t noticed until now, but despite his bravado he’s shaking a little. Your own heart has started beating hard enough for you to notice it. Does Bobby have something specific to talk about? Something serious? The kiss perhaps. You hadn’t been keen to talk about it with Priya today, though you did overhear that Rahim had slept in the lounge last night. You’re about to ask him how he’s doing when, in true Bobby fashion, he hits you with a baffling _non-sequitur_.

“Have ye ever thought about sunflowers?”

“Um, what about them?” you ask.

“Like, I’m no that short, right?” says Bobby, raising his voice a little and injecting it with what sounds like feigned confidence. “I see a sunflower and I’m like… feck! That flower is bigger than I am.”

You grin widely, following his lead. “You are so not ready to hear about trees.” You’d do anything to be there for him throughout this mess with Priya. You know from experience how shitty it feels to be mugged off repeatedly. On telly no less. It’s miserable.

But maybe, you remind yourself, this is what he needs. Distraction from everything that’s going on. Someone to make him laugh. You still can’t help wishing he needed more from you, though. You longed to hug him and snuggle the way you had in the early days of the villa, when you’d settled nicely into a relatively long-term close friendship couple. You were so close with him after the mess of the pageant, but something has changed between the two of you since then. Bobby’s grown distant. And god, you _miss _him.

“Ye crack me right up,” he says. “Thanks, sunshine.”

Inexplicably you reach out and touch Bobby’s hand, but it snaps away. Fast. Like a reflex. The heat of embarrassment rises within you and you look over at the pool, its surface completely still. You pull your own arms in, hugging yourself as you focus ever harder on the landscape to ward off the swirling confusion you feel within you.

“Jamie…”

You turn your head to look at him, afraid of what you might see.

He’s bricking it. He’s pale and his hands are still trembling, but more now. It seems like he might say something else, but he clamps his mouth shut, frowning.

“Heyo, lads and ladies!” You both turn to the sound of Jakub’s voice as he, Chelsea and their dates file into the kitchen from the walkway out of the villa. “We’re back, and I’ve got a text!”

“Guess we’d better go see about it,” says Bobby, standing up. His expression has flipped like a light switch. He’s smiling at you like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He reaches out to help you up, and as you grasp it, it’s cold, clammy, and shaking like a leaf.

* * *

You hadna meant to hear any of it.

Not long after breakfast, ye saw Priya go back in the villa (she’d complained that it was screamin' hot and her makeup was melting, which struck ye as a bit odd). Ye figured it was as good a time as any to talk about that thing that neither of ye wanted to talk about: the fact you’d had to tell Rahim about the kiss because she hadna done it like she’d said she would. But first ye had to finish your ice lolly. It wasna the sort of conversation to be had over an ice lolly.

“You’re really taking your time with that,” Jamie said, looking at ye funny. You winked at her. She winked back and ye laughed. Ye were tempted to have a second one.

This whole thing felt strange. Officially ending something that had never officially started. When Priya’d kissed ye on the roof terrace after Operation Nope, at first it’d felt nice. Like ye were getting what ye wanted since ye lost her to Rahim. To be fair, you’d kissed her back because ye were caught up in it and ye wanted to. But everything from that moment on had felt, well… not right. Your gut didna like it. Even if your tadger had forgotten, your head had not. Priya had a way of making ye feel like she was blind to everyone else but you, until she blindsided ye wi' how quickly she forgot ye.

When you finally gathered the resolve to do what needed to be done, ye went looking for her upstairs in the dressing room. Your head was spinning a bit. _Just gotta get it over with_, you thought, walking into the room wi' as much purpose as ye could muster. It was empty, but she and Noah were on the terrace. Suddenly ye found yourself frozen, feet planted firmly on the dressing room floor and unable to move, wishing ye could unhear what you’d just heard.

“This is pretty big, babes. Are you absolutely sure that’s how you feel?” asked Priya.

“Well, it’s not that I’ve gone off Hope or anything… I just wonder sometimes if I could be happier with Jamie.”

_Oof_. Something in ye clicked and ye couldna get out of that room fast enough. If ye had, ye woulda happily missed out on the fact that he was considering choosing Jamie over Hope at the next recoupling. _FUCK. Fuckity fecking fuck. _

Well, that changed the script for ye, didnit? How in god’s name were ye supposed to tell her how ye felt about her _and_ what ye overheard at the same time? Ye couldna. But she deserved to know what Noah said, there was no way around it. You tried. On the beanbags after lunch. It took ye that long to psych yourself up, and after all that, ye still didna know how to say it and ye choked. _Nugget. _

You later managed to “bump” into her in the kitchen to try again only to have a text come in at the exact wrong moment, sending everyone to the fire pit (where you're now sat) for a surprise recoupling.

And a lads’ choice recoupling at that.

What are ye supposed to do with this then?

You glance at Noah who's sitting rather stiffly beside ye. What if you get to pick before him? What would Jamie want? In the last few days she hasna said much about Noah, so ye dinna know where her head’s at. Whether ye pick her or no, somebody loses out or is put at risk. Bloody hell, you dinna even know what kind of recoupling this is! Is someone going home tonight?

You slouch back into the bench. She’s there, stunning in a sparkly jumpsuit, lined up wi' the other girls at the front. She smiles at ye and blows a kiss. You catch it in the air and slap it to your cheek. Ye’d blown her one the night Priya had chosen ye, your own weird way of saying thanks for being your first Love Island partner and helping ye to get used to all this madness. You didna know ye fancied her then, not that “fancied” is even the right word. You canna be sure what it is but it’s big. Big enough that tellin’ her feels like taking a flying leap into the sun.

Brad’s moving things around now, pulling Chelsea and Jakub off to the side. Looks like they get first pick, and Hope seems to have noticed that too. If she’s trying to hide the excitement on her face, she’s not doing a good job of it. Noah looks nervous. You heard the two of them squaring off by the jacuzzi after the mud challenge this afternoon and ye wondered what it was about. Probably the same old shite.

Finally the crew seems to be ready. When Jakub stands ye realize you’ve been tuning everything out and thank your lucky stars it wasna you who buzzed first.

“Alright,” says Jakub. “I want to couple up with this girl because I think a lot of people might have given up on her. And because I think I see something in her that nobody else does.” You could swear ye saw Noah’s jaw twitch at that one. “She’s a great laugh,” Jakub continues, “and I want to see where things could go with her. I always say I’m not afraid to shake things up, and I want to see where my journey takes me. So the girl I want to couple with is… Hope.”

“Woah,” says Hope, but you're not totally convinced she’s surprised. She walks over to Jakub, kisses him on the cheek, and sits down. Nobody says anything.

Noah doesna seem too shocked, either. But he does seem bothered. He’s just sitting there, staring straight ahead, jaw twitching. It’s hard to know how to feel about it. He’s a pretty sound bloke in your mind, and if ye think about it, you’d probably be put off as well even though this is what ye signed up for. But knowing what ye know, you canna help but wish that everyone had been a wee bit more honest with each other.

"... so the boy I want to couple up with is... Henrik!" says Chelsea.

Henrik, who's sitting next to ye, is chuffed. "Good lad," you say, giving him a pat on the back. He grins and runs over to Chelsea, throws his arms around her and dips her backwards into a Hollywood kiss to the slow applause of everyone but Marisol. Classic move.

You dinna know whether to be grateful or no when Noah’s phone goes off next. As he stands up, you begin to feel your stomach flip flopping around inside ye.

“Right, right. Okay, this is a bit of a shock, but actually, it’s not completely unexpected," he says, glancing at ye before continuing. "And I know what I want to do.

"I want to couple up with this girl because even though this wasn't how I was expecting it to go this evening, I'm excited to give it a try with someone new. Ever since the beginning, I've wanted to see what it would be like to get to know this girl. So I can't really believe I'm saying this, but… the girl I want to couple up with is Jamie."


	10. Chapter 10

“The girl I want to couple up with is…” says Noah, pausing for the usual dramatic effect, “Jamie.”

You blink. Your body feels like a hollowed out vessel as you slowly walk over to Noah to murmurs from the other islanders. Bobby, who’s sitting next to him, shuffles over to make room for you. “Nice one,” he says as you take your seat, giving you a thumbs up. You make your best squee face, but it’s forced. Coupling up with Noah is what you’ve been trying for this whole time, so why don’t you feel amazing? Why do you feel sick to your stomach?

“You alright?” asks Noah, placing a warm hand over yours. You’ve been gripping the seat tight enough that your knuckles are white.

“I’m great!” you reply, trying to communicate enthusiasm through a whisper. Noah does not look convinced.

Hope shoots you a look and hisses at you to be quiet. “I guess we need to talk afterwards,” he says to you in hushed tones.

You nod. The recoupling is a blur. An out-of-body experience, as if time is standing still for you but moving at warp speed for everyone else. A week ago you would have been chuffed to bits at being chosen by Noah, but there’s something about him that just isn’t sitting right with you anymore. He’s lost his allure. He’s run you around the mulberry bush too many times, seeking you out for flirtatious but plausibly deniable encounters while proudly flying a flag with Hope’s name on it.

Hope is with Jakub now, though. You look over at her. She’s _giggling_. You’ve never seen her do that before. Even with Noah. When she rests her hand on Jakub’s muscular thigh (he flexes it and she bursts out laughing in the middle of Gary’s speech) you remember how much of a performance artist she is. How committed she is to winning the upper hand in any social situation and how seamlessly she can create leverage out of nothing in order to do so.

You smile and applaud as Gary and Lottie sit down on the other side of Noah, who’s staring straight ahead, expression cool as ice. You can’t read what’s going on with him. _He’s probably in shock with all this too_, you remind yourself. Perhaps there’s nothing to worry about. After all, it will be nice to finally have Noah all to yourself. You do have an undeniable connection with him. A raw sexual chemistry that needs to be explored.

“The girl I want to couple up with is… Marisol,” says Rahim, to the applause of all the islanders. Marisol smiles sweetly and takes her place next to Rahim. As they sit down on the bench together, Rahim mouths “thank you.”

Only Bobby and Priya (who looks solemn and vulnerable) remain.

Bobby doesn’t wait. His leg brushes against yours as he jumps straight to his feet. You feel sick. “Right! I guess it’s my go,” he says, his voice imbued with confidence and natural charisma. “I think it’s fair to say that, like, some people, this recoupling has thrown me for a bit of a loop! But I guess there’s not much I can do about that right now.

“I think most of ye probably get that this is going to be more of a friendship couple and less of a blazin’ romantic one, but… I want you lot to look at this girl right here and tell me she’s no flames emoji flames emoji one hundred emoji. So we’re gonna couple up as friends, but sooner or later this girl is gonna wrap someone around her finger like spaghetti. You havena seen the best of this lass yet.”

Priya wipes away a tear as she walks towards Bobby for a hug. “That’s so sweet,” she says. “You’re such a good friend. And like, I know it’s only a friendship couple, and I am still hoping to meet someone I get the spark with in here…”

“I don’t think that’s your problem, love,” says Rahim bitterly. Priya winces and Marisol, frowning, places her hand gently on Rahim’s arm. She shakes her head.

“Anyways,” Priya continues, her voice trembling. “I’m so glad I’ve got a friend like you in here, Bobby. You’re the best.”

* * *

You’re sitting on the daybeds with Marisol, waiting for Noah who’s still at the fire pit with Hope finishing up what looks like an intense conversation.

“You finally got him,” says Marisol. “How does it feel?”

“I don’t know. I’m having a hard time settling into it. But maybe it’s just the shock of it all. I think it’ll be easier to figure out how I feel about all this once I hear how that’s going,” you say, nodding towards the fire pit.

“Fair enough.”

Most of the couples have dispersed throughout the garden, but two islanders are conspicuously absent. “I wonder where Bobby and Priya went,” you say.

“Oh, they went into the villa,” says Marisol. “Bobby wanted a chat with her. It looked serious. Probably about that whole ‘friend’ thing. She looked a bit blindsided by that.”

“I don’t really see how she could be.”

Marisol shrugs. “She’s in her own little bubble. Here comes Noah,” she says. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Hi Jamie,” he says, jogging towards you and taking a seat next to you on the daybed.

You smile at him. “Hey. How did that go?”

He pauses, frowning. “Good. I mean, we’ve ‘decoupled.’ Her word, not mine.”

“What, is that like, ‘conscious uncoupling’ or something?”

“I guess so,” he says, his voice laced with bitterness. “She didn’t even want to talk about it, really. So I think we can safely say that it’s over.”

“But how do _you_ feel about it?” you say, tilting your head. “I mean, this is a pretty big deal. You guys have been together from day dot…”

“Yeah. Well, this is the summer of our lives, right? And if that’s it for me and Hope, I don’t want to waste even a second of the time I could spend with you.”

You smile, but something is holding you back. There’s something so strange about his demeanour. He’s clearly agitated. In fact, it feels like he’s in a hurry even though he’s got nowhere to go. The fact that’s on edge is to be expected, you suppose—he was just dumped a few minutes ago—but there’s a part of you that is still left wondering who you are to him in all this. Does he like you for you, or does he need someone to salve his bruised ego?

Noah’s eyes narrow and he slumps backwards a bit, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He’s apparently noticed your reticence. “You seemed kind of unsure about the fact that I chose you tonight. Like, it didn’t seem like you were really pleased,” he says.

“Well, I really wasn’t expecting it. I mean, I am pleased. Really! I think we have something worth exploring. I just don’t want to be your backup plan.”

“We’ve always had a bit of a vibe, though, haven’t we?” he says, sitting up. “I’ve known that since before we got here. Since before Hope existed. If I’m honest, the last couple of nights I’ve found myself daydreaming about being with you again…” The smile is returning to his eyes and the cadence of his voice feels slower. Calmer.

You fidget with the silvery sequins of your jumpsuit, feeling the heat building inside you and butterflies fluttering in your stomach. You’re not sure if it’s the memory of being with him in Jack’s bedroom or the things he’s saying to you here on the daybed. Regardless, you know he’s right, but you still can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong.

He slowly leans towards you, and you find yourself leaning in too. _You want this, Jamie. You know you do. _The way he smells almost kills you. It’s that same soft, musky smell he always has. The one that gets you every time you get close enough to catch it.

There’s something new in his eyes, now. You can’t tell what it is. Confidence, maybe. He’s so smooth as he softly traces a line with his finger from your breastbone to your bellybutton, the skin left exposed by the deep v-neck of your jumpsuit. It’s like a record scratch—a punch to the stomach from the inside out.

His hand comes to rest gently on your waist, and as the shock to your gut clears, it leaves a void in its place. It’s like your body has short-circuited and your nerve endings have died. _Push through Jamie, you want this. Don’t do something you’ll later regret._

“I’d really like to kiss you now,” he says, a slow, tight smile drawing up the corners of his mouth. Before you can respond he leans in further, tilting your chin up with his hand. Your lips meet. Nothing happens. It feels flat.

Clinical, even.

You try to go with it, to kiss him back with the same fervour he’s kissing you with, but eventually it’s like a couple of horses nibbling on each other. You begin to feel claustrophobic with him so close to you andyou begin to pull back because you literally can’t bear it.

Noah looks like he’s been stung. “Is something wrong, Jamie?”

“No, I mean… yeah. I don’t know,” you finish weakly.

He frowns at you. “That was… wow. I feel like I’m in for a fun time.”

The coldness you sensed from him during the dumping is back now, only this time it’s directed at you. He’s walled you off already, you can feel it. For a moment you feel uneasy and even guilty, but then the actual cruelty of what he’s just said sinks in. Your body becomes tense and you feel a wave of anger flare through you. Is he fucking kidding himself? Is this sixth form college? _Fuck that_, you think to yourself. You didn’t break up with Ben only to get into it with a dickhead like _this. _

You stare him dead in the eye, your expression hardening. “How dare you, Noah. You’ve been playing games with me since we got here. I’m over it. But I didn’t realize how over it I was until you touched me and I felt my skin crawl,” you say angrily.

Noah looks dispassionately around the villa. It’s like he hasn’t even heard a thing you’ve said. Your words have bounced off him like coins in a coin toss game at a theme park. They’ve missed their mark but nevertheless are gone forever.

“The others seem to be getting ready for bed,” he says flatly. “I guess I should go join them.”

“Did you hear me?” you ask, lip curling in disbelief.

“I heard you. I’m just done with you. We’re decoupled,” he says, standing up and walking away, leaving you stunned.

* * *

You don’t want to follow Noah inside right away, so you take a moment to fill up your water bottle in the kitchen.

“Haw, Jamie.”

Bobby’s wandered in from the villa and the sight of him is pure relief. You set down your bottle and throw your arms around him, hugging him tightly. He startles but quickly settles into you, squeezing you back, and gives you a friendly peck on the forehead before pulling away. “You alright, sunshine? I dinna want to pry, but it looked a wee bit intense over there,” he says, gesturing with his water bottle at the daybeds.

“Yeah,” you say, absently. “I’m alright.” You can’t bear to talk about it anymore today. You’ll fill him in tomorrow after a good night’s sleep.

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then suddenly uncomfortable. “Actually, I had something I wanted to talk to ye about, if it’s okay…” he says.

Just then, Jakub, Hope, Chelsea, and Priya come walking into the kitchen. “…So I said, ‘if you’re worried about that, then definitely don’t eat the falafels!’”

You and Bobby look at each other as the other three laugh. “That is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t believe that’s how they make mayonnaise. Olive oil and vinegar? What LOLs!” says Chelsea gleefully.

“Um, I don’t think that was the point of the story, babes,” says Hope.

“This reminds me of the time I was at a bodybuilding meet up and this rep came along with the meal replacement samples…” says Jakub. He takes a seat on the counter and launches into a long-winded story about protein macronutrient ratios.

Bobby chuckles and rolls his eyes. “Maybe it can wait until tomorrow.”

“I guess it’ll have to. I’m shattered, anyways.”

He throws his arm around you (in that way that you love) and walks you back into the villa.

Noah is already in bed when you eventually get back to the bedroom after getting changed upstairs. He’s hugging his edge of the bed with his back to your side. The other islanders are chattering quietly to themselves.

You’d considered sleeping in the lounge, but somehow dealing with the questions that would bring seemed worse. You just wanted to be by yourself and talk to nobody. There was nothing you could really do about the alone time, but you could hedge your bets against any inevitable check-ins by concerned, well-meaning friends.

Your usual comfy shorts and t-shirt jammies are still in a pile on the floor next to your bed. They don’t feel like enough for tonight, and instead you’re wearing sweatpants and one of the promotional t-shirts you found laying around the villa.

You climb into bed and roll onto your side, your back to Noah, desperate for sleep.

* * *

The sound of your phone wakes you. You’re curled up in bed alone after Noah left for alternative sleeping arrangements sometime in the middle of the night. _What’s this? It’s still dark outside…_

You pick up your phone and squint at the screen until your eyes focus enough for you to read.

_Jamie, today you and the girls are going on a mini-break. You must all get ready and meet at the entrance without waking the boys. #catsaway #micegonnaplay_


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is a double-header. That means you've got both chapter 11 and 12! I hope you enjoy them.

DAY 1 - EPISODE 1

It’s taken a minute or two to sink in, but now that it has, ye know exactly what’s going on. It’s early morning and you’re still feelin’ a bit fuzzy, but ye can see now that only the lads are here. You _thought_ you’d heard someone’s phone go off, but ye were still half-asleep.

In fact, ye heard sneaky, muffled conversation from Gary’s bed only minutes ago, too. It’s what woke ye up properly in the first place, and ye opened one eye to the sight of Lottie hustling herself quietly out of the bedroom door.

You’ve seen this show before and ye can guess what it all means.

Casa Amor.

_Bollocks._

You sit up in bed and hunch forward, pinching the bridge of your nose in regret. Why hadn’t ye just left the kitchen and had the chat with Jamie somewhere else? You glance at what was her side of the bed until the recoupling last night. Well, ye didna know that she’d be leaving today. And if you’re honest, it didna feel like the right time either. Not after what you’d seen from the roof terrace. You’d asked to talk on impulse after she’d thrown her arms around ye like she was drownin’ and ye were an inflatable buoy. She was well rattled by whatever had happened with Noah.

But whether or not you’d done the right thing by waiting, ye still find yourself without the chance to tell her now. Tongue-tied by the situation. By the _game._

You slump down the white acrylic headboard and pick up her pillow, but the sickly sweet smell of Priya’s fruity perfume hits ye like a headbutt from a football hooligan, so ye throw it down.

Suddenly, though, it occurs to you that only a few minutes have passed since ye saw Lottie running out of the room. _Shite_, maybe they’ve not left yet. You scramble out of bed and tear through the room into the foyer (still in your pyjama bottoms), throw open the front door, and step outside into the blinding sun just in time to see Lottie disappear into one of two black Jeeps. The car door slams shut loudly and with finality, as if it were an extension of Lottie herself.

You stand there, shielding your eyes from the glare, and watch as they pull away. You can see Jamie’s dark brown braid through the rear window as the Jeep pulls away, its tires crunching on the gravel driveway and leaving a cloud of dust behind it. She never saw ye.

DAY 1 - EPISODE 2

“Aren’t you the bloke that made a cake shaped like his knob?” she says, taking a sip of bubbly from a slender plastic champagne flute. Her name is Emily. She’s tall—about your height—with choppy chin-length hair the colour of white birthday cake. Ye can tell she’s totally unimpressed by ye. No mind.

“Oh, that was a right laugh!” says Gemma, grabbing onto your arm and causing ye to startle. Somehow, you’ve hooked her without even trying. Her eyes are twinkling like Christmas lights as she looks at ye, reminding ye of how Jamie looked when she laughed—a full _belly_ laugh—during that pancake challenge a few days ago. Somethin’ was no right about her that day, ye could tell, but she wouldna talk about it.

“Thanks,” ye say awkwardly, trying to figure out how to shift yourself away without hurting her feelings. Seeing new faces like this, it feels like a flashback to the first day. Except this time you’re not on the subs bench.

This time, a few of the girls have taken an interest in ye, not that it matters. Gemma, who hasna left your side much since she got here (despite your best efforts to tactfully get away), is short and cute with in-and-out bits going all inny and outy in the best kinda way. If this _were_ the first day, and if Jamie didna exist, you’d have said she was a bit of ye.

But it’s not the first day, and Jamie does exist. You wonder what she’s thinkin’ now. At the recoupling last night, ye couldna stop staring at her, terrified ye were gonna lose her even though she was never yours in the first place. Not that she was someone who could ever _belong_ to anybody. That independent, fiery spirit of hers was one of the things that dropped ye to your knees in awe of her.

You’ve always been one to smooth things over. To take one for the team. To put the group ahead of yourself. It’s just who ye are and you’ve always thought it was an admirable quality of yours, but here ye are admiring the opposite in someone and ye canna figure out why.

DAY 1 - EPISODE 3

Eyeliner and paper towel. Whoever came up with the idea to ban pens and paper in the villa was an evil genius.

When ye heard from Alison that the boys would be packing suitcases for their partners, ye had an idea. And once you had that idea, carrying it out became _urgent_. You were haunted by regret and totally desperate to tell Jamie how ye felt.

Luckily, Noah was no bothered at all when ye asked him if he could slip a note into her suitcase for ye. In fact, he seemed weirdly unaffected by whatever happened last night, though a wee bit bitter perhaps. He’d complained that Jamie was a cock-tease, but that he didna mind because there were six new birds to crack on with. “Aww, come on, mate,” you’d said, unable to keep yourself from laughing awkwardly to make it sound less confrontational.

You didna quite trust him, nor did ye like the idea of feeling indebted to him in any way. Especially after hearing him raggin’ on Jamie. But right now ye need him on your side.

_Good enough_, ye think to yourself. It’s short and smudged but it says what ye need it to say. It just has to get the gist across until you’re able to see her in person and say it all in better words.

After folding the note a few times to keep the contents secret, you make your way back downstairs towards the bedroom. You clutch it to ye as if it were made of gold.

It’s only when ye hand it to Noah that the probability that Jamie’s no interested in ye punches ye in the face. You canna remember the conversation ye have with him, a right blether about nothing at all really, as ye watch him place it in her suitcase on top of her perfectly, uniformly folded bikinis. You can feel your body _humming_—you’ve started something ye canna take back. Are ye on a fool’s errand? She’s never given ye any reason to think that she sees ye as more than a mate. So what makes ye think there’s even a chance she does?

_Don’t think about it, man._ You’re certain that once the panic levels off, you’ll regret if ye havena told her. There’s nothin’ like six new blokes, probably all of ‘em taller and fitter than you are, to light a fire under your arse. Your mouth begins to feel dry and ye excuse yourself, thanking Noah for the favour.

DAY 2 - EPISODE 1

“I have to give a girl a piggyback ride round the lawn!” You cry out, throwing your phone down onto one of the bean bags.

“Me, I want a ride!” says Gemma, already running up to ye. She jumps onto your back and starts to slip. Eventually your arms find her thighs and ye hoist her up until they rest somewhat comfortably on your hipbones. Her arms go round your neck and she slides them down your chest until she’s huggin’ ye.

Honestly, ye wish someone else had volunteered. One of the girls who’s clearly no graftin’ ye. Emily. Shannon. Or Vanessa, even. But whatever Gemma feels cannot be minded at the moment. As you always say, it’s for future Bobby to worry about. And there’s nothing better than a challenge to keep your mind off things. “Comfy back there?” you call out behind ye.

“Let’s go!” she says.

You begin to move and soon you’re in a full sprint. You can feel Gemma bouncing along with each step. As ye gain more speed, ye feel her strong thighs tighten around your waist.

“Quick!” shouts Jakub. “We’ve got to beat the other villa!”

You feel Gemma’s calf shift as she bounces, and it accidentally brushes a bit too close to The Bishop for your liking and the spark shoots through ye like a firecracker because that bloody thing has a mind of its own. But your ability to spot jokes in the wild—pranks just waiting to be played—comes to your rescue and you make a sharp turn towards the pool, running full pelt. _Hah!_ You’re gonna scare the shite out of her with this one.

“Hey!” Gemma cries. “My hair, Bobby!”

“Just jokin’ lass,” you shout, hooting with laughter as you shift away from the pool at the last second. But suddenly you feel Gemma throw her weight towards the pool, tightening her grip against your body.

“Wha-”

Before ye can say anything else, the two of ye are falling head-first into the water.

“Agh! You wee scunner!” ye say, laughing.

“Got ya, goof,” she says, flicking your ear (ow!) before climbing out of the pool and wringing water out of her hair.

DAY 2 - EPISODE 2

Twelve perfect chocolate cupcakes, only slightly domed above the lip of the paper casings. “Aw, gaun yourself, Gary! These are well tidy.”

“Nice one!” says Gary, your eager student. He’s wearing your blue apron and his face is streaked with flour. “How long ’til we eat them?”

“Well, they have to cool completely. Then we’ve gotta pipe the buttercream,” you say, tapping the foil-wrapped butter you’d taken out of the fridge a few hours ago. “They’re for the party anyways. So hold onto yer butts,” ye say in your best Sam Jackson drawl.

You begin popping the hot cupcakes out of the tray and onto a cooling rack. When the villa lost the challenge and the cocktail party, you decided to throw your own party. A cupcake party. But there were only enough paper casings for each person to have one cupcake, and you didna have any drinks or decorations, so it isna really a party at all. Just cupcakes. But giving Gary a lesson in baking still felt like a nice way to pass the time, and the cupcakes should pump the group back up after the loss. Poor Gary especially, he’s been moping about, pining for Lottie for the past 48 hours.

It’ll also keep ye from thinking too much about what’s going on in Casa Amor. Especially what’d happened over there during the challenge this afternoon. Aw, though. She woulda laughed so hard at Rahim’s lap dance, the poor bloke.

You look out over the lawn. Jakub and Siobhan are working out together in the gym. Henrik, Rahim, Vanessa, and Shannon are goofing off in the pool, playing some kind of weird keep-away game with a volleyball. Emily’s on the deck over by the jacuzzi meditating by herself.

It’s hard to ignore Noah and Blake, though. They’re on one of the daybeds together, continuing whatever had happened in the broom closet during the challenge, which was a continuation of whatever you overheard coming from their bed on the first night. Your body tenses as you watch Noah roll on top of her. “That’s a bit much, innit?”

“He’s been acting like a real bellend since Hope dumped him after the recoupling,” says Gary. “Have you heard he’s been slagging off Jamie when you’re not around?”

“No. I mean, he’s said a few things in front of me,” you say, stepping towards the fridge to grab the milk ye dinna yet need for the frosting. You canna stand to think about it. It makes ye so mad.

“He’s been saying all sorts when you’re not around, mate. He said she’s all fur coat and no knickers.”

“Aw. Fuck sakes!” ye say angrily, closing the fridge door a little too much force. Hard enough that ye hear a few bottles rattle inside. “He’s talkin’ keech, he is. He’s also been saying he mugged her off, but I’m pretty sure she was the one who split with him. I canna say for sure, but that’s what it looked like from where I was sat.”

“Well, that would make more sense,” says Gary. “Mugged off twice in one night. And I guess it would explain why he’s, you know, doing _that_.”

DAY 2 - EPISODE 3

It’s not that ye dinna like the attention at _all_. In some ways ye do. A wee bit. There’s something kinda nice about being around someone who likes ye and makes sure ye know it. But it’s superficial unless it means something to ye, you know? It’s a wee tickle to your tadger, so to speak, and that’s all. It also puts ye in a situation where feelings get hurt and you’re the one doing the hurting.

It’s only in the last year or so that girls have started looking at ye instead of through ye. When your baking videos started getting noticed, suddenly ye went from numpty to, well, _not._ At least to those who knew your channel existed, which wasna that many. But it was more than ye expected when ye started it all.

At first ye took full advantage. You’re ashamed of yourself, really. You were rebounding after Briony left and totally unused to the attention. You spent a few months actin’ like a bawbag with whoever would have ye, and you’re sure ye left a few girls wonderin’ where ye fucked off to. It’s not that ye meant to ghost anybody, really. In hindsight, it was just easier to disappear than to look at your own failings.

“Um. Bobby?”

_Oh._ “Aye, sorry. What were ye sayin’ lass?”

“I just wanted to see where your head’s at,” says Gemma. She’s fidgety for someone who’s usually proper confident. Her hands are twisting together and she glances at ye briefly before looking out over the warm, golden glow of the string lights and into the garden below.

“Oh, aye,” you say again awkwardly. You’d been worried that this was coming, and now it’s here along with a wallapin’ urge to flee the scene. It’s like a kid pulling at your hand, begging ye to take them somewhere more fun than this. Or, at the very least, somewhere where you dinna have to deal with all the shit feelings that come from doing the right thing.

You know ye havna been clear enough with her. You’ve not given her anything to go on, mind, but ye havna told her plainly either. It’s not like you’ve been talking up the fact that your feelings for Jamie have changed, so she doesna know from watching the show before she got here. God, it’s pure shite telling somebody ye dinna like them in that way.

“Are… you going to talk to me?” asks Gemma, her voice edged with frustration.

“Agh, sorry Gemma. My mind is a bit of a mess at the moment. But,” ye say, pausing to find the right words, but struggling. Aw, your leg’s bouncing a bit now. Embarrassin’. You let out a breath before saying, “you’re sound, but I think we’re better off as mates.”

“Well, thanks for being honest,” she says, brushing something imaginary off her purple dress. “Eventually.”

You wince. “Sorry,” you say weakly.

“It is what it is,” she says as she stands up and heads back into the villa leaving you alone on the terrace.

DAY 3 - EPISODE 1

The producers are really pulling out all the stops while the girls are away. Every morning so far, breakfast has been spot on. A toasty croissant with a bit of salted butter and apricot jam—it’s magic. It’s also Jamie’s favourite. You wonder what she’s up to. Probably sill asleep after the cocktail party.

Jamie. She’s blindingly gorgeous, inside and out. The last night ye saw her she was wearing that silvery sequinned jumpsuit that reflected all the colours of the rainbow whenever she moved. In that moment, you were beginning to wonder if she was your rainbow fish.

You’re not exactly sure when it happened. When your feelings began to change. You’re not even a hundred percent sure they did in the first place. Maybe ye felt something all along and ye didna know it. But if ye could pinpoint one moment when ye felt really just, _close_ with her in a new way… well. No. Not on your life. That couldna be it. Could it?

The new girls are still up in the dressing room getting themselves ready for the day. You’re sitting with the other lads on the benches in the kitchen but your mind keeps wandering off to various things, like what Jamie thought when she read your note. What might she say when ye see her again after all this is over? Does she feel the same way you do, and might she want to give it a proper go with ye?

Aw, that uneasy feelin’ in your gut has crept back now, catching you unawares. It’s like there’s a batterysitting in there, leaking some kind of low frequency electrical current into your stomach lining. In some ways, it’s butterflies. You want to be with her so badly that ye _feel it_ in your body. But it’s also the anticipation of grief when ye find out it’s no meant to be.

Jakub and Noah burst out laughin’ and it snaps ye out of your thoughts. “I’ll tell you what,” says Noah, chuckling and shaking his head. “Doing bits on the first night… it changes everything.”

“No doubt,” says Jakub. “What’s it been now, three nights? You think there would’ve been any bits if Jamie were here?”

Noah shakes his head emphatically. “No way, mate.”

“You made the right choice. Why should you look like a mug?”

Gary glances at you. You feel your teeth clench as the heat rises up through your body. _Say something._ You canna just sit by and let them talk shite about anyone like that, let alone Jamie. Your knee begins to bounce in place (as is bloody fucking typical) and your stomach turns. Your throat tightens, stuffed with cotton wool. It’s like you’re paralyzed. Your body is holdin’ ye hostage.

“That’s not on, mate,” says Henrik, looking clearly disgusted.

_Bobby, you’re a wankstain._

And just then, as you’re beating yourself up for being pathetic, Brad and Danny appear on the walkway from the villa. Brad’s speaking discreetlybut urgently into his headset. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but you catch him glancing at Noah and Jakub.

“Hi you lot!” says Danny, the camera guy. “Special delivery. We’ve gotta film you guys finding this over in the entry area. Five minutes, okay?”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is a double-header. That means you've got both chapter 11 and 12! I hope you enjoy them.

DAY 1 - EPISODE 1

It's early afternoon at Casa Amor and one of the new boys, Felix, is swimming lengths in the pool while you sit at the edge with your legs in the water. When you sat down he asked you to join him for a swim, but you declined. The sun feels so nice on your skin right now and, if you’re honest, Felix seems a little desperate. “You look like you’ve come straight off a runway!” he said. “You could totally be a model, Jamie.”

You yourself have never seen a model that’s five foot four and lacks a thigh gap, but you do appreciate the compliment.

This adventure feels like it has come at exactly the right time, though. When you arrived here this morning, you were still reeling from last night. Still disgusted. “New villa, new boys, new life!” you’d said defiantly, desperate to throw off the weight of Noah’s presence. Now you’ve settled in, though, and you’re enjoying the change of scenery just as much for what it is rather than what it’s not.

Nevertheless there’s something keeping you from relaxing fully into Casa Amor. _What is it about this place?_ you think to yourself. You’re usually so good at knowing your own mind and using the signals your body sends as a compass for navigating your feelings. Even though you’re here with the other girls, there’s still a part of you that feels alone, like you’re missing a piece of yourself.

DAY 1 - EPISODE 2

“You know what they say… you should never let someone else pack your suitcase,” says Lottie, unzipping hers and flipping open the lid.

You’d finally received your suitcases from the other villa. Chelsea was chuffed to bits, admitting that she was _dying_ to change into something new. Her bikinis are strewn all over the bed, but the only thing she has eyes for now is a cork that had settled to the bottom of her suitcase during transport. “I can’t believe Henrik packed this!” she says, beaming as she cradles it sentimentally in her arms. “Bless him.”

After opening your own suitcase, it looks like Noah has included nothing. Literally nothing. You take everything out of your suitcase item by item to be a hundred percent sure. Even though was instructed by the producers to include something for you, he hasn’t. You can’t help but laugh at how petty he is.

DAY 1 - EPISODE 3

“Made you that drink, Jamie. It’s a Hurricane Felix on the rocks,” says Felix, arriving at the sun loungers with a sparkling mystery drink the colour of a sunset decorated with a single green cocktail umbrella.

“The weather girls back at the old villa would _love_ that,” says Lottie with a smirk.

Felix gives her a sideways glance, then hands you the plastic tumbler. You take a sip. It tastes like summer.

“I actually just wanted to have a little chat with Jamie…”

Lottie frowns and pouts. “Sure, that’s cute,” she says, casually flipping her pink dip-dyed hair over her shoulder. “I was gonna go find Kassam, anyways.”

“We can go hang out on the swing bed, if you’d like?” he says to you once you’re alone.

“Yeah, sure,” you say, smiling awkwardly as you begin walking together. You know what this game is all about so you can guess why he wants to chat. He’s a nice enough guy, but… it’s just not a love connection.

All of a sudden, Felix takes a running jump into the swinging bed. You stand there stunned as it rocks from side to side with Felix struggling to balance himself. The boy has zero coordination.

“Come on and join me, Jamie!”

The bed swings back and forth as you try to get on. But your heel goes out from under you and you slip, having lost your balance, and land half on his lap. Your drink has splashed over Felix’s black jeans and you wince, then try to laugh off the embarrassment. “Sorry. What’s in this thing, anyways?”

“Lots of tequila,” he says, grinning. “No big deal. My fault anyways.” He mops up his jeans with the corner of the duvet, staining it light pink. “Oh, whoops.”

You settle down beside him, and for a brief moment there’s an awkward silence.

“Pick a number between one and six,” he blurts out.

“Um, four?”

“Ahh, wrong I’m afraid.”

“Can I try again?”

“Nope, sorry! Them’s the rules.”

DAY 2 - EPISODE 1

The morning air is already warm. Another perfect day. _Does it ever rain here?_ you wonder to yourself.

The songbirds are momentarily interrupted as you hear the door to Casa Amor open and close behind you. You turn and see Arjun standing there with a plate of croissants.

“Hi Jamie. I am in love with this look,” he says, his eyes sweeping the length of your body. You didn’t like this guy and his perpetual bedroom eyes almost on sight.

“Thanks,” you say. You make a mental note to change out of the black lace-up swimsuit you chose this morning. In fact, after the past couple of days, you think it’ll be a while before you find yourself in another deep-V.

“I’ve brought you a little something,” he says. He brings the plate over and offers it to you with a wink. With the way he’s continuing to look at you, the ‘little something’ feels like a transaction.

“Thanks! I love croissants,” you say, trying not to sound as guarded as you feel as you accept one. 

“I know! I remember you telling Bobby.”

“That’s super sweet,” you say softly, feeling your brow furrow and your stomach tighten. You wonder how Bobby’s doing back at the villa. Has he met someone? Now that he and Priya are no longer pursuing anything, he’s totally free to crack on with the new islanders, just like you are. 

Arjun, apparently not noticing the change in tone, swipes his hair back with this palm, his biceps flexing. “Oh, it’s nothing really. You’re a very memorable person.”

You chuckle awkwardly, then stuff the croissant in your mouth. Almost the whole thing in one go.

DAY 2 - EPISODE 2

“I got a text!” says Chelsea. “For the next challenge, Felix has to give a girl a lap dance.”

His face flushes red. “I don’t dance,” he says.

“C’mon, mate. Don’t let the crew down like this! A cocktail party is at stake,” says Graham.

Felix sighs and stands up, his eyes darting around nervously from one islander to the other. “Okay, who wants this?” he says, gesturing at his own butt.

You’ve been trying to deter his interest, but nobody’s stepping up and he looks a little embarrassed. Like the last boy picked for the team in gym. So you pull him towards you and without a word, he starts to dance. His face is hard to read, but you can tell he’s not happy. This challenge seems to have really thrown him.

He sways his hips at you, much to the amusement of the others who cheer him on. He’s _so_ not smooth and he’s clearly dying inside. “This is the worst,” he says, turning away from you and awkwardly grinding his green swim trunks above your lap. You wonder whether Bobby’s having to do this, too. The producers seem to be assigning challenges for the competition according to what will make for the best telly (makes sense, you suppose) and you know that Bobby has similar feelings about dancing.

Felix looks back over his shoulder, gauging your reaction to his performance. “Woo! You got this Felix!” you say, grabbing onto his hips to encourage him. His arms are shaking as he holds himself above you, like he’s been holding the plank position for a long time. There’s something kind of cute about him, if you’re honest. Something endearing. You can’t help but love an underdog. 

DAY 2 - EPISODE 3

“Ugh, I’m so sleepy… I guess you really can have too much Prosecco,” says Chelsea.

“You were the life and soul today, Chelsea,” you say. It’s true, too. Chelsea’s a hilarious drunk.

“Thanks doll!”

“She could never be more fun than you, Jamie,” says Felix.

Priya rolls her eyes. “Calm down, little boy,” she says, picking up a pillow and whacking Felix in the face with it. He crashes into the nearest bed. “Uh, I didn’t hit you _that_ hard…”

You feel your brow crinkling. That seemed a little mean-spirited. But before you have time to say anything, there’s a flash of movement as Felix whips back around, grabbing his own pillow, which he flings at Priya.

“Agh!” She ducks. The pillow hurtles towards a fishbowl filled with condoms on one of the side tables, but falls short. It’s enough to kill the energy in the room though, and the couples begin climbing into bed.

Your head’s still spinning a bit and you’re thankful when the lights finally go off. You glance at Felix in the darkness and a wave of unexpected sadness washes over you. He’d rescued you from Arjun during the party and, in a moment of drunken euphoria, you’d kissed him on the swinging bed. You’d let yourself be carried away. His lips were soft against yours and his arms wrapped around your waist tenderly. This painfully awkward boy, with his mess of blue curls, was a surprisingly good kisser.

So why was it Bobby that you saw when you closed your eyes? You’d pulled away, your eyes inexplicably welling up with tears. Felix hadn’t understood. “I think we’re having a moment,” he’d said. Bless him.

You sigh heavily. Felix must have heard because he rolls over and pulls you into a gentle embrace, his warmth surrounding you.

“I’m so sorry, Felix.”

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s not like I didn’t know. I’ve watched the show.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not supposed to say anything, but you and Bobby have been trending on Twitter for ages now. You’re the last to know, babe.”

DAY 3 - EPISODE 1

Hot air from the dryers and straighteners hits you as you and Lottie enter the dressing room. Cutting through it is the sweet scent of strawberry and mango.

“Morning, girls!” says Priya, tweaking her eyelashes. Everyone else sits slumped and murmurs a good morning to you, apparently still recovering from last night’s party. Except for Chelsea who waves you over for one of her signature enthusiastic hugs. Lottie merely grunts.

“Oh, come on girls! This could be our last day here with the boys,” she says. “Speaking of which, how are we all feeling about them?”

“I mean, I know how Marisol feels…” says Hope, snickering.

“Ooh, yeah!” says Chelsea brightly. “Have you and Graham got up to anything?”

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know.”

“Well, yeah, it’s why I asked! Has his ship docked in your port? Has the crab entered the pot?” She lowers her voice, looking directly at Marisol. “Has his sail swelled under your wind?”

Despite the fact that it’s morning and you’re a little hung over, you bust out laughing, clumsily dropping the embroidered off-the-shoulder bikini top and neon red bottoms you’ve just pulled from the cupboard. Over the past few days, you’ve really enjoyed getting to know Chelsea. She’s impulsive, hilarious, and warped.

Marisol’s lip curls. “Please stop, Chelsea. If you must know, we may have fooled around a little last night.”

“Whoo-whoo!”

“Umm, Chelsea? What was that?” says Lottie, arching an eyebrow.

“It was meant to be a wolf whistle, but I can’t actually whistle. So I just say, whoo-whoo!”

“You’re adorable, babe,” says Marisol, chuckling softly. “Are you happy with Elijah?”

“Yeah, I mean… it’s _Elijah!_ How could I not be happy with that handsome man?” she says, shuddering. “Woo! See? He gives me fanny flutters. Fanny flutters, Lottie!”

Lottie gives Chelsea a sideways glance. “It’s too early for me to be thinking about your fanny.”

“How about you, Jamie?” says Hope, a detectable edge to her voice. “I thought I saw you get up to a little something on the swing bed last night.”

Your stomach twists. Somehow you don’t feel ready to tell the others how you feel about Bobby. Especially with the attitude you just felt from Hope. You don’t want to have the big talk that you know you’ll inevitably have to have with everyone, especially Priya, peppering you with questions. You just want to allow your feelings to settle in, to become familiar and comfortable. Because right now they’re terrifyingly fresh and confusing. Well, they’re definitely confusing. Maybe fresh isn’t the right word.

“We may have had a little kiss,” you say, adjusting your folky black bikini top in the mirror until it sits at just the right spot.

“So much for Noah,” says Hope sourly. “You moved on quickly!”

Marisol tuts. “Leave it out, Hope. Jamie’s just having some fun.”

“I mean, have you even been listening to Jamie at _all_ over the past few days?” says Lottie. “Did you hear what a creep he was with her?”

“To be fair, I’ve tried not to talk about it too much around you, Hope. But Noah and I are one hundred percent done. And it’s not like I chose to be recoupled with him. In fact, I’d been avoiding him.”

“_Fine_. Whatever. Anyways,” she says, shaking her head brusquely and changing the subject, “it’s probably obvious where my head’s at. Carl’s really sweet, and he’s smart which is generally my type, but I’m just not feeling it.”

“All I’m hearing is that he’s not Noah,” says Lottie.

Hope blushes. “Shut uuurrrrppp,” she says.

“What about you, Lottie?” you ask. “Do you think you’ll bring Kassam back to the villa?”

Lottie considers a moment before speaking. “Kassam is one hundred percent my type, there’s no doubt about that. I’m not sure where we’re at or what we’re going to do, though.”

“I’m having tons of fun with Arjun!” says Priya. “He’s a laugh a minute, like Bobby, but with more of an animalistic personality. Basically, replace baking with barking…”

DAY 3 - EPISODE 2

For a while, no one says anything. Suddenly, Lottie blurts out, “They’ve totally played us!”

“What about you and Kassam, babe?” asks Priya tentatively.

“What _about_ Kassam?” she bellows. “That’s totally different! He’s just a bit of fun. I’m not taking him to meet my _nan_ or anything. Agh!” She storms out of the dressing room. You hear curses and doors slamming.

Priya releases a frustrated sigh. “Ignore her. And ignore this video, too. The boys had a right to crack on just like we did.”

“Hope, hun, you’ve been really quiet this whole time,” says Marisol.

You all look over at Hope who’s still holding the phone in her hand. She’s paused it on Noah’s face. He’s smiling.

She looks crushed as she slumps down onto a stool, her brow is knitted with worry. “I don’t know, girls. I keep thinking about what he said. Doing bits on the first night changes everything. He did actually say that, right?”

“We don’t know what he could be referring to in that video,” says Marisol, resting her hand gently on Hope’s shoulder.

Chelsea pipes up. “It seems pretty obvious to me!”

Marisol shoots Chelsea a look. “You’re not helping.” She turns back to Hope and her expression softens. “Here, let me have that,” she says, putting her hand out for the phone. Hope reluctantly gives it to her, and she passes it to you.

“No, but she’s right, though. What else could ‘doing bits’ be referring to?” says Hope, staring down at the floor. “It just hurts, you know? I thought our connection was more emotional than physical. That our feelings went beyond that…”

You find your frustration building the more Hope speaks. You don’t understand how she can be so bitchy to you (and still be so hung up on Noah) after she was the one who dumped Noah in the first place. You’re done being blamed for this but you don’t want to get into it so you politely excuse yourself.

Neither Lottie nor the boys are anywhere to be found when you reach the bedroom. You hop onto your side of the bed. The pillow wall is still there from when Felix placed it between you last night, so you hunker down and snuggle into it. It still smells like fresh laundry.

You look at the ceiling, _aching_ to return to the villa. To be with Bobby again and tell him how you feel. Even if you go down in a ball of flames. But what if you never get the chance to tell him? What if you get back to the villa and he’s baking cupcakes for some perfect Amazonian weather reporter? _Don’t go there, Jamie_. But you can’t help it. You can’t help but go there because not thinking about it is impossible. It feels even more painful to _not_ think about it than it does to think about it.

You shake your head, wondering why you didn’t figure any of this out before. Before you left him behind for Casa Amor. You’d been so blinded by Noah. But why? You can’t help but wonder how much your drive to pursue Noah was fuelled by the fact that Hope had forbidden it. _Fuck_, you think to yourself. _This is so you, Jamie_.

You look down. The phone is in your hand. You’d forgotten about that.

You hold it up and press play, watching it through to the end.

You watch it again.

No Bobby.

DAY 4 - EPISODE 1

You blink at your screen, then close your eyes and breathe out quietly, smiling.

_Girls, it’s time to leave Casa Amor. The boys are waiting to say their goodbyes. The next time you see them will be at this evening’s ‘Stick or Switch’ recoupling._

You made it.


	13. Chapter 13

“Ready girls,” said Hope. “Charge!”

You and the other girls heaved forward, charging the boys who were braced for impact. An almighty wet slap thundered across the paddling pool as bodies collided in a rainbow explosion of goop.

“C’mon ladies, I’m up for grabs!” hollered Bobby, a yellow slime oozing down his body from head to toe. That’s Bobby for you. He commits.

To win the challenge you needed to make orange, and Bobby was the only one wearing yellow. So you _needed_ him. You remember eyeing him wickedly, ready to pounce at your target like a cat. “Oh, your slime is _mine_,” you said.

“Feeling feisty, are ye sunshine?” he clapped back. You can’t be sure, but you think it might have been the first time he called you that. But you were. Feeling feisty, that is. You stole a glance at prison guard Hope who was already covered with thick red slime but carrying on anyway, slithering up and down Noah’s body as if it were a stripper pole.

Bobby launched at you while you were distracted, and together you slipped backwards, sliding across the paddling pool. He hooked a leg around you and suddenly his body was tangled up with yours, like you were playing Twister on fast-forward. He rolled over and pinned you, and under the yellow slime you saw his cheeks flushing from the exercise. “I havena had a proper wrestling match in ages,” he said, chuckling through heavy breaths.

“This isn’t fair,” you said, writhing helplessly beneath him. “I can’t use my hands!”

“Who says I want it to be fair?” One corner of his mouth tugged upwards into the smile that you now recognize as your favourite. The “one dimple” smile. _He’s up to no good at all,_ you thought to yourself, enjoying the prospect of mischief. He was so confident around you back then. So playful. Still reeling, you think, from the whiplash of being chosen and then dumped by fickle Priya.

Bobby’s amber eyes—flecked with brown, green, and gold—were locked onto yours now and you could feel his desire to compete with you settling into your pores like a serum. Rejuvenating you. Feeding and growing that scrappy little kid inside you that loves to let out her hair and play in the dirt.

When you realized you were totally powerless against his strength, you closed your eyes to regroup and plan your attack. _The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting._ You had years of experience play-fighting with your brothers and it was going to pay off right now, you reminded yourself, inhaling deeply. Finally, his body shook with laughter and he released you, standing up and extending a slippery yellow hand to help you up. “Just jokes, lass,” he said, wiping the back of his hand on his forehead and leaving a sticky smear.

“Wait, you missed a spot,” you said, grasping onto him with one hand and hauling yourself up while pointing at his chest with the other.

As he looked down you flicked his nose with your finger. “Much better,” you said, turning on your heel. It was time for red.

****

Amber eyes flecked with brown, green, and gold meet yours over the fire pit. For a moment, they’re radiant. He’s beaming at you and you smile back at him warmly. Your stomach flips.

But after hardly a second, his smile fades and a flicker of something else crosses his face. Worry? Hurt? You can’t say for sure, but he looks away, averting his eyes as if he can’t bear not to. “I hope you girls are ready to get hands-on!” he says loudly. Brashly, even. “Because the man with the fastest fingers in the villa is _back_ and he’s still single and ready to mingle!”

A warm evening breeze teases your shoulders as you and the other islanders cheer for him. Its warmth makes a mockery of your unease and raises prickly goosebumps up and down your arms. Your gut is telling you that something is wrong between you and Bobby, but you’re not sure what it is.

You try to read him as Caroline introduces him to Arjun. “Bobby, you must be happy to have these ladies back in the villa,” she says, “But as you can see, Priya has recoupled with Arjun. Any hard feelings?”

“No, no hard feelings, mate,” he says, shaking Arjun’s hand. “I’m glad Priya’s found someone.”

“Thanks,” says Arjun. “Delighted to meet you.”

Priya looks relieved, but still a little worried. “I feel bad for leaving you single-”

Bobby shakes his head. “Naw. Dinna fash, lass. I’ll figure something out,” he says, glancing at you sideways for a fraction of a second before looking back to Priya and Arjun. You tilt your head, trying to make sense of it.

“Thank you, Bobby,” says Caroline, turning to gesture towards the empty space (gulf, really) between you and Noah, who was sitting with his arm around Blake, a new girl who had the worst case of resting bitch face you’d ever seen. “You can go sit down with the other islanders.”

Bobby sits down next to you, and it feels awkward. He rubs the back of his neck and leans back, then slides himself backwards and sits up straight, before crossing one leg over the other (the latter of which had been bouncing a little). You smile at him, feeling an urge to break the ice but unsure how to do it, so you just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “I hoped you’d stick.”

“You know me,” he whispers casually. “I couldna be any stickier if ye rolled me in jam.”

***

Rahim, Bobby, and Gary are sitting by the pool on the beanbags. They all smile as you cross the astroturf towards them.

“Alright stranger?” says Gary.

“Yeah, long time no see,” says Rahim.

“Aww, look at these boys. Tryin’ to play it cool,” says Bobby. “You’re looking spicier than sriracha in that, Jamie.”

“Oh, this?” you say, tugging on your black bandage dress. You’d felt like it was a little underwhelming after seeing Caroline Flack in her gold mini-dress with its draped, asymmetrical hem. You know you look great, though. “Classic,” Marisol had said. She wouldn’t have let you leave the dressing room otherwise. The reality is that you’ve never been great at accepting compliments, and, if you’re honest, what’s _really_ going on is that you’re standing here in front of Bobby and you’re confused and a little scared and it’s easier to worry about what you’re wearing than to face the reality that is the weirdness between you.

“Aye.” He smiles.

“Thanks,” you say, sitting down. It’s hard to know where your head’s at. Being here with him, it’s like some kind of limbo. You feel a weird push-and-pull attachment to him, simultaneously drawn to him but holding back at the same time. Nervous.

You knew how to handle the court jester before you had feelings for his client. It had been nothing (or next to nothing anyway) for you to pretend he was the real thing when you knew all along he was a defensive stand-in. Or maybe a suit of armour. An exoskeleton protecting a soft, sensitive interior.

It’s not that you weren’t invested before. No, nothing like that. You wanted more from him, of course. Even as a friend. But things are nevertheless different, and now, standing in front of this protective wall built from laughter, the scope of your feelings for Bobby and his soft underbelly has widened beyond what you could ever have imagined. But at the same time, it all feels very acute. Your heart feels like it’s teetering on the edge of a precipice, unsure of whether to take a leap of faith or save yourself.

“It’s so good to have you back, Jamie! You must have so many questions,” says Gary.

His words are a sharp tug back to reality, rescuing your attention from floating away like a helium balloon. You breathe out a songless lip-trill. “I hardly know where to start,” you say, trying your best to play it cool. “Recoupling schmecoupling. What was the daftest thing we missed?”

“Jings, a _lot_,” says Bobby.

“You should have seen these two trying to talk to the new birds,” says Gary. Your stomach slowly ties itself into a knot. “Bobby was proper trying it. On the first day he walked over like, ‘alright ladies?’ And Emily turned around and said, ‘aren’t you the bloke that made a cake shaped like his knob?’”

“I’m creased!” says Bobby, falling over laughing. “That girl’s funny, man. I’m glad she made it back.”

“Me too, mate,” says Gary, giving him a high-five, and leaving you wondering how much of this is Gary’s well-established wandering eye and how much has to do with any video footage the villa may have received of whatever it was you heard happening between Lottie and Kassam back at Casa Amor.

“Tell me more about these new girls, then,” you say, your eyes darting nervously between the three boys, but lingering a little longer on Bobby.

Gary pauses, and you wonder why he’s looking at you a little funny. “I think you’ll like Emily if you give her a chance,” he says finally. “She’s got good crack. I can see Lottie’s itching to get stuck in, but there’s no need.”

Rahim nods. “Blake’s pretty cool too, to be honest. They’re both nice girls.”

“Aye,” says Bobby. He frowns a moment and as he begins picking at his cuticles, you can tell that something inside him has shifted. He’s visibly tense. “Actually, Jamie… can we chat?”

“I guess I’d better go have that talk with Lottie,” says Gary, patting Bobby on the shoulder. “We’ll give you two some space.”

Gary and Rahim stand up and you watch as they walk towards towards the bedroom, where you’d left Lottie (who was alternating between rage and tears) in Chelsea’s care. There’s a crunching noise as Bobby shuffles from side to side on his beanbag. “So…” he says, waiting until the others are out of earshot.

“So…”

“I’m glad we’ve got a chance to talk properly. It’s been a while since we saw each other, and…” he says, pausing. His brow wrinkles and he glances at you, then shakes his head. “I hate thinkin’ you might be in danger of going home.” He shuffles himself again, his fingers tracing lazy circles in the ground before picking up a piece of loose green plastic and holding it up close for inspection.

“You might be, too.”

“Aye, I’d noticed that. What do ye think we should do about it?”

“Um, maybe we should… couple up?”

“Ha,” he says, his eyebrows raising as he rolls the little green fleck between the balls of his fingers before flicking it away. “I’m glad ye said that. I thought maybe… after everything that’s happened…” He chuckles under his breath, looking dead uncomfortable.

You hear the sound of heels clicking behind you. You turn to look over your shoulder and Blake’s there in her bronze metallic dress, its plissé fabric draped like a toga and resembling some kind of sexy Halloween costume for a Roman Emperor. Brutus in space. “Sorry to interrupt. Jamie was it?”

“Yes,” you say, doing your best to mask your tension. She’d turned her pinched expression on you after the recoupling and insulted you to your face, calling you a try-hard, so you weren’t exactly a fan.

“Sorry. I’m still learning everyone’s names,” she says with a hollow smile. “Have you two seen Noah?”

Bobby looks around. “He went off with Hope a while ago. We were just having a private chat. But I guess that’s our moment done, anyway.” He winks at you and gets up. “I’ll see you in a bit, Jamie.”

***

You can hear Lottie’s voice above all the others when you walk over to the kitchen where she, Chelsea, and Emily have gathered. “Honestly, babe, I didn’t mean it like that. You knew it was going to be the first thing we all asked though, right?”

“Well, yeah,” says Emily, her soft blonde hair tied back into a smooth pony and wearing a juniper pink floral mini-dress. She looks like a twenty-first century Botticelli painting. “I’m just saying it felt like you had some intention behind it. I didn’t like the way you asked the question.”

Lottie takes a step back and raises her palms in a calming gesture. “I’m sorry if it came across like that. Jamie knows me pretty well,” she says, turning to you. “I’m harmless, right?”

“What’s going on?” you ask. Her conversation with Gary didn’t last long, apparently, and it mustn’t have gone well. Getting involved in this would be a death wish.

“Total misunderstanding, babe. I was just asking Emily here how things are going with her and Gary,” says Lottie, her voice laced with accusation. She picks up a single salt and vinegar crisp from a red plastic bowl on the island and pops it in her mouth.

Emily looks incredulous, crossing her arms in front of her chest defensively. “Her _exact_ words were, ‘Has he taught you about erections yet?’”

***

The shower stall smells sweetly of soap, and you inhale deeply, enjoying the sensation as your lungs open up and the warmth fills your body from the inside out. However, it doesn’t do much to relax you. Worry and confusion have settled into you like an oily sludge.

When you’d walked into the fluorescent lighting of the bedroom, Jakub, Bobby, and Rahim were there arguing about the sleeping arrangements. Bobby had splayed out on one of the corner beds, with each of his limbs pointing to a different corner.

“Jamie!” he said, sitting up. “Don’t ye think it’s only fair we singletons get the pick of the beds?” He waggled his eyebrows playfully at you as if nothing was strange between you at all before flopping back down on the bed and doing a snow angel on the duvet, almost knocking a half-full can of Dr. Pepper from the nightstand.

Things kicked up a notch when Lottie marched in from outside, still on the warpath after her conversation with Gary. “Get up!” she’d bellowed. “This is just _not_ happening. You’re not taking a whole bed to yourself.”

“Be reasonable, Bobby. There are so many people here,” said Rahim. “It’s going to be an all hands on deck situation.”

As if perfectly timed, Graham walked in from the foyer, holding his toothbrush, followed by Marisol and Gary. “It’s the opposite of all hands on deck. That would mean there were loads of beds free.”

You remember wondering if this ludicrous exchange was even happening. Tensions in the room were high as the islanders continued to talk over each other about seemingly frivolous things, and it almost felt like you were a ghost, having floated above it all after being crushed to death by a falling piano. Like a cartoon character.

After hearing Bobby and Lottie agree to be bedmates, and worse yet, discuss which essential oils she should use to give him a massage, you had to leave. The whole exchange left you rattled, each painful thing said like the sudden popping of a balloon.

“I’m sure you can find _someone_ to share with.” _Bang._

“You can be the big spoon.” _Bang_.

“Will you give me a massage to help me get to sleep?” _BANG._

So you’d left for a long evening shower, gathering up your toiletry bag and your same old cotton pyjamas to change into.

A satisfying _thhhrrrrp_ slips out of the bottle as you squeeze conditioner into your hand. As you’re working it through your ends you realize that this reunion certainly hasn’t been what you’d expected. To be fair, Bobby’s reaction to the conversation you’d _intended_ to have with him was something that you’d never dared to predict. In fact, it was easier not to get your hopes up at all. But this strange distance he was keeping you at? That threw you for a loop. What about your relationship had changed since you saw him last? What happened since you threw your arms around him in the kitchen the night before you left?

It’s been about thirty minutes now, and you don’t think you can get away with much longer. The producers have forbidden books and any other solitary activities for a reason—because they don’t make for good telly. So you step out of the shower and dry yourself off, then change out of the jade green bikini you’d worn for your shower and into your pyjamas. The steam has fogged up the mirror, so you wipe a circular patch with a dry facecloth and open the door to clear the air.

You’re brushing your teeth when you hear a soft knock at the door. It’s Marisol.

“I thought I’d find you here,” she says, smiling warmly. “Mind if I join you?” She holds up a red toothbrush.

You spit your toothpaste into the sink. “Toothbrush buddies, right?”

Marisol chuckles. “Forever.” She smiles at you for a moment then bites her lip, becoming more serious. “I had an interesting conversation with Gary,” she says, turning on the tap briefly to wet her toothbrush. “Just before I came into the bedroom.”

“Gary? That must’ve been awkward,” you say.

“It wasn’t, really. He came to talk to me. About you.”

“About me?”

Her expression crinkles for a moment as she looks at you. “Do you… have feelings for Bobby?”

Taken aback, you push the loose, wet strands of treacle-coloured hair out of your face. “You’re not here to brush your teeth, are you.”

“Listen,” she says, “I’m not supposed to say anything, but, you know. ‘Hos before bros,’ as they say.”

You smile. “Hos before bros. So…?”

Marisol sighs heavily and rests her toothbrush on the bathroom counter. “Bobby gave Noah a note to put in your suitcase. Apparently he saw Noah put it in. I was there when you pulled everything _out_ of that suitcase, and it wasn’t there. Which means that Noah took the note out of your suitcase before giving it to the producers.”

“Wait, what note?”

Marisol pauses a moment, picking up her toothbrush, then putting it back down again. She looks at you. “I don’t think it’s my place to say. Maybe you should talk to Bobby about it directly.”

“Right,” you say, lost in thought. What kind of thought, you can’t say. Your mind is an addled mess as you rinse off your toothbrush and put it back in its travel case. “Okay. Thanks.”

As you round the corner into the hallway, you—

“Oh!” You’ve walked into something. Someone. A familiar scent—a blend of Superdrug suncream and, inexplicably, pipe tobacco—lets you know who it is before your eyes do.

“Oh, Jamie!” he says, his voice cracking. “Sorry. I was just comin’ for ye. Can I have a chat?”


	14. Chapter 14

“I guess the roof terrace is as good as anywhere,” you say, leading Bobby down the hallway toward the dressing room. As you walk the rest of the way in silence, your heart is beating against your chest like it’s trying to break through. What would prompt him to write a note, you wonder, and what would prompt Noah to keep it from you? Might Bobby fancy you a little bit? You don’t dare to hope. You hate moments of acute uncertainty like this. They’re high-stakes opportunities for anxiety, embarrassment, and irrevocable fuckups.

On the terrace you finally take your seats kitty-corner to each other on the perimeter bench. There’s a light breeze and it blows against the wet cotton on your back, making you feel suddenly very self-conscious. This isn’t how you want to be having this chat—wet hair and frumpy pyjamas—but there’s nothing to be done about it now. You look out over the garden and somewhere in the distance, you hear the call of a scops owl.

The lights downstairs in the bedroom shut off, snatching away the warm glow from the red bougainvillea climbing the back wall of the villa. But with the string lights strung above the garden and the fairy lights in the trees, it nevertheless feels like the two of you are sitting in the shadowy glimmer of a thousand burning candles, though neither of you have looked the other in the eye yet.

A plastic sigh escapes the white cushioned seat as Bobby shifts position. He gazes out to the fields beyond the villa. The vertical lines between his brows have deepened and his lips pull into a soft pout, favouring one side as if he’s blowing the nerves out of his body like smoke.

Suddenly, purposefully even, he turns to you. “What’s that?” he says, pointing at your chest.

You look down and he catches you swiftly but gently under the nose with his index finger, startling you. “Got you,” he says, cheeks flushing. He smiles at you and you see his Adam’s apple bob down and back up. There’s something comforting about the fact that he seems just as nervous as you. This time the joke seems different—it doesn’t _feel_ like the jester’s handiwork. It’s too raw and vulnerable. It’s come from the freckled little boy on the inside.

“You got me back,” you say softly.

“What d’you mean?”

“You owed me one of those. From the slime challenge. Remember? You demanded a time and a place for a nose-flicking duel.” You smile.

Bobby relaxes a bit. “That’s right! You wanted to call it something else though…”

“A boop-off.”

“Aye, that’s it. We never did come up with a name in the end, did we?”

“No, and that’s why we never did it.”

“Ha,” he says, and for a moment silence settles again over the roof terrace. But it’s a different silence now. Awkward still, but less so.

Bobby looks around like he doesn’t know what to say, then rubs the back of his neck. “So… I think I’ve been weird since ye came back. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been weird too.”

“Have ye?”

“Well, yeah,” you say, wrapping your arms around yourself to keep warm.

“I’ve been a bit of a mess these past few days, to be honest. I thought of ye loads,” he says, nonchalantly undoing the last few buttons of his shirt and passing it to you.

“You did?” You accept the shirt with unspoken gratitude and slide it over your arms, then tie your wet hair up into a messy bun with the elastic that you’d forgotten you’d slipped onto your wrist.

“Aye,” he says, his brow wrinkling. He appears to hesitate for a moment, but then tightens his lips and glances at you. “I’ll just come straight out with it,” he says, his voice a little shaky. “I like you. A lot. More than just a mate.”

As you look at him, your worries—the ones you’d fought so hard to keep from consuming you—come crashing down. You’ve been stuffing them back, stuffing them back, stuffing them back… keeping them at bay all this time without stopping. Tending to them like a dozen spinning plates on sticks, unable to let them go for fear that they would collapse, taking you along with them.

A performance for an audience of one.

But in this moment, with Bobby’s words, you let them go. They smash onto the floor into fairy dust, forgotten, and yet you’re still standing.

Your entire body smiles at him as if you’ve inhaled more joy than can fit in your lungs. But at the same time, the way he’s fighting with himself right now is melting you like a Salvador Dalí clock, and there’s a real possibility that you might slide right off the bench into a puddle on the floor.

Whatever it was that you felt at the breakfast place after the New Year’s party, the timidity that kept you from pulling Noah aside… well, it doesn’t feel relevant here. Here, with Bobby, nothing feels more natural than daring to hope. Than believing in the possibility of you and him growing into something honest together. Because when he looks at you (as he’s doing now), he _sees_ you. And for you, being seen has never felt ordinary enough that you could take it for granted.

As your eyes flicker down to his lips, you feel so profoundly lucky to be here with him. That it’s _him_ you get to share this moment with. Your nerves have been eclipsed by desperation to close the distance between you, to throw yourself beyond the point of no return because now that you know how he feels, friendship with Bobby… well, it doesn’t feel like enough anymore. Nope. Nowhere near it.

“What is it?” says Bobby, tentatively lifting his fingers to his lips. “Do I have something on my mouth?”

You raise one eyebrow, but say nothing. _He’s still so nervous_, you think to yourself as he stares at you without speaking.

But Bobby’s eyes quickly widen with realization and he breaks into a smile, allowing his fingers to drop away from his bottom lip. “Oh! Wow,” he says, his cheeks reddening. “That’s… very cool.”

He leans into you, his eyes dancing like sparks around a campfire, and loops his arm gently around your waist. Around his own button-down shirt. You smile back, allowing him to take the lead. The anticipation is killing you, but he doesn’t keep you waiting. His nervousness is melting away like chocolate in a _bain marie_ and your body is humming with it.

The kiss is tentative at first, but so unmistakably _Bobby._ His breath catches as you pull him closer to you, his bare chest now pressing against you. One toned arm holds you tight to him with surprising strength, reminding you of the slime challenge and how you used to playfight with each other in those early days. Only this time, you don’t want him to let you go.

His slender piano fingers tip your chin up to him. Your lips part and his tongue playfully finds its way between them, striking a perfect balance between greed and restraint and sending a thrill of electricity up your spine. Bobby’s an intuitive kisser. And he tastes like Dr. Pepper.

Eventually he pulls away, leaving you momentarily speechless. “That was nice,” he says, looking at you with inquisitive eyes. “Like, really, really nice.”

“It was amazing,” you say, almost breathless. How do you articulate what you’re feeling? You can’t.

Bobby beams at you. “Honestly? I kind of just wanna sweep you up again. You’re like, this gorgeous pile of dust that looks great in everything, all ready to be swept up.”

“Um…”

Bobby blushes. “What I mean is, you’re irresistible. And I canna believe this is really happening.”

“I’m really happy, Bobby,” you say, leaning back against the bench. He shuffles over and drapes his arm around you in that familiar way, kissing the side of your head. You know there’s more to talk about, but for now, you just want to do this right here. To sink into the silence, relishing it. Breathing in this new presence.

You hadn’t noticed until now how fit he really is. Boyish, sexy, and sort of accidentally muscular. Not showy or over-the-top about it like Noah or Rahim, the both of whom peacock regularly at the villa gym. You know that back home in Glasgow, Bobby spends a lot of time on a leisure centre football pitch with his friends, but his peacocking seems to happen in the kitchen. And when he’s slouching down like this, you can see a hint of his cupcake baby. A little jelly roll not unlike your own. It drives you wild for him.

Eventually, Bobby speaks. “You’re cold,” he says, thumbing the gooseflesh on your arms. “Let’s go inside. Think they saved us a bed?”

“Do they know what’s going on up here?” you say, quirking an eyebrow.

“Naw. Good point,” he says. “I mean, Gary does, but he doesna know ye fancy me back.”

“Marisol knows we’re having a chat. She cornered me in the bathroom after Gary talked to her,” you say as the two of you stand up.

Bobby’s eyes widen in surprise. “She did that, eh! Gary said he swore her to secrecy,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “He’s a good mate though, that lad. He cornered _me_ after talkin’ to _her_. He did that all on his own.” He places his hand on the small of your back, guiding you towards the door.

You quieten to whispers as you walk down the hall, and as you emerge together at the stairway, you just barely make out in the darkness that Bobby’s raising his index finger to his lips. He nods down towards the foyer which, just beneath the stairs, opens into the bedroom. And that door is almost always open.

As you tiptoe down the steps, you’re struck with an idea. “Meet me in the lounge,” you whisper before sneaking into the bedroom to grab one of the extra sets of bedding and a couple of personal items. On your way out, you spot Bobby’s flannel pyjama bottoms in a pile next to the bed Lottie’s snoring in—your pre-Casa Amor bed—and quickly grab them, closing the bedroom door silently behind you.

When you enter the lounge, Bobby is already rearranging the modular corner sofa like he had when you fell asleep out here after the pageant. This time, he’s cleverly set his monogrammed water bottle over his phone’s flashlight, diffusing its harsh beam and creating a reflective (if not moody) lamp on one of the corner seats.

The lounge door shuts with a soft click.

“I like the way you think, lass,” he says as you hand him the duvet and sheet. He shakes them out and lays them over the makeshift bed.

“There’s nowhere for us to sleep in there anyways, the singletons are all starfishing or hogging the blankets.”

“Well, I’m not exactly ragin’ about it,” he says, amused. “It’s ready for ye.” He peels back the duvet in a gentlemanly fashion, then fakes you out and hops in himself, barefoot but still wearing his camel coloured shorts. “Just kidding. C’mon in. I’m super cosy.”

“I brought you these,” you say, holding up the pyjama bottoms studded with slices of what you can only assume is carrot cake.

“Oh, ace,” he says, holding up his hand to catch them. You hear a muffled, metallic clink as he undoes his belt buckle under the duvet. That sound, there’s something highly erotic about it. It takes over your body and you feel a throb germinating between your legs and radiating outwards. You’re suddenly reminded of the time you were laying in bed with him and he accidentally rubbed up against you, hard as a rock, while he slept. An unexpected urge for Bobby had sliced through your body, scaring you. How ignorant you’d been back then. Your body knew you wanted him before your brain did.

“Decent,” he says, chucking his shorts over the back of the sofa. They land with a soft jingle on the teal area rug. You climb under the covers and nestle yourself into the nooks and crannies of his body, tangling your legs with his. He smiles at you in the dim, irregular light and you feel close to him, enjoying the masculine, husky scent of his body up close. Excited by the proximity, but also settled and happy in the silence.

“I don’t know if you know, but I wrote ye a note,” he says, finally.

“Marisol said. I wish so much that I’d received it. Especially now that I know why you wrote it.”

“Me too.” His voice is soft, wistful. You look up at him and his full lips are slightly downturned. It’s only then that you realize the gravity of what Noah had done. What it had meant for Bobby, and why he’d been so weird (his words) since you arrived back.

A brief conversation with Chelsea earlier in the evening had confirmed for you that the boys had also received a video from Casa Amor giving clues about who was doing what with whom. You don’t know exactly what was on the video (you’d never gotten beyond how it had affected Henrik and Gary), but it’s reasonable to expect that your brief dalliance with Felix had made the cut. Bobby watched that footage believing you’d read the note. The realization makes your stomach drop like you’re cresting the first hill of a rollercoaster.

You lift yourself up to him, eager to erase the feeling for both of you. For a balm to your heartsickness over it all. Your lips touch his gently and you feel him startle. He’s nervous again as he draws you into him, his heart pounding so hard you can feel it in your own skin. His kiss is tender. Respectful. “Church tongue,” Hannah had called it in one of the group’s early conversations about kissing. You can tell he’s holding back and you want more, desperately.

“I want you, Bobby. All of you.”

You can feel him shaking a little as he pulls the duvet over the two of you, creating a hotbox of pipe tobacco and Kakadu plum. “I’m at your service,” he whispers, his eyes fluttering briefly to your lips before returning to meet yours. This time he takes the lead and presses his lips to yours, his tongue following a soft, natural rhythm, like a slow bachata. You catch gently onto his bottom lip with your teeth and he can’t help but moan into you, putting his hand on your hip and pulling you to him. And for the first time since that morning after Operation Nope, you feel him. All of him, pressed tightly against your thigh, and it feels like a cavernous void in your body has opened and you’re desperate to fill it.

His hands are warm and soft on your back, having slid them beneath your pyjama top. He toys with the straps of your rather utilitarian sleeper bra.

“Would you like me to get that out of the way for you?” you say.

“If you insist.”

You sit up and peel off the green button-up you’re still wearing, throwing it down before slipping out of your red and white tee. He looks up at you, now gently backlit by the LED glow through the white duvet, as if asking a question. You nod in agreement and, with an errant flick or two the back unhooks and your bra hangs loosely from your breasts, no longer doing its job.

He pulls himself up a bit against the back cushion of the sofa, drinking in your silhouette. His long fingers make their way beneath the nude cotton-spandex and he sighs, cupping one of your breasts with a sense of urgency, passing his thumb over your hard nipple. His lips find their way to your collarbone and you inhale sharply, deeply, as his tongue faintly traces it from left to right.

“You’re _such_ a tease,” you whisper, shrugging yourself out your bra and letting it drop down beside you.

“It’s no teasing if I follow through, is it?” he says as he moves his hand down towards your stomach, drawing lazy shapes with his fingers and leaving frissons of desire in their wake.

His lips return to yours as his hand moves lower still, palm tracing the outline of your hip and down to your thigh. You push yourself into him, barely able to manage any other answer than that. You’re too distracted by the building electrical current his touch is spreading through you. He breaks the kiss and says, “Perhaps a better question is, what can I do to prove to ye I’m no a tease?”

“Don’t stop doing exactly what you’re doing…”

He smiles, satisfied—proudly even—as he slides himself down the length of your body and gently parts your legs, landing between them. Oh, you feel him now through your pyjamas. How _hard_ he is. He is so unbelievably fucking hard and it takes everything for you not to inhale him into your body. You thrust upwards into him, _fuck_! And he places a firm hand between your legs, gripping you over the most sensitive, throbbing part of you, holding you still. Thumb down, palming your swollen pussy, fingers splayed towards your bellybutton for stability. Taking control.

“You’re driving me crazy, Bobby,” you hiss, pressing yourself against his hand. You can feel how wet your knickers are becoming. He smiles and kisses your lips to quiet you, then each imperfect breast, trailing down your soft stomach all the while passing his thumb over you. Exploring, gently digging into the soft terrain through your pyjama bottoms. Your body’s thrumming and your legs settle open into butterfly pose, somehow both melting against and straining into his touch at the same time.

He presses himself against you now and a soft moan escapes his lips. You’re wet through with desire as he rocks into you through the double layer of flannel and cotton, the tip of him finding your entrance but just barely able to probe its way in. Cockblocked by your pyjamas into playing just-the-tip. He’s doing it on purpose and it’s excruciating.

Still thrusting into you, he returns his attention to his thumb on your cotton-covered clit, rubbing it with steady pressure now. He looks at you and his fingers curl under, tugging on the waistband of your shorts questioningly.

“Oh my fucking… _yes_, Bobby!”

He pulls back and begins to slide your shorts down, revealing a pair of silky black knickers. You kick those off, too.

“You’re gorgeous,” he says, leaning back over you. He kisses you again before pulling back and sliding his fingers between the slippery folds of your pussy, shooting a firework up your spine, and you arch your back almost violently against him. For a moment your eyes flicker open and you see him use the other hand to take hold of his own cock through the cream coloured flannel, and for the first time you get some sense of its shape. Oh, he _is_ a tease. But he’s not just teasing you, he’s teasing himself, too.

You’re close now. You press yourself up on your elbows for a moment then hook one arm around the back of his neck, pulling him down to you and whispering hoarsely, “Bobby. I want to eat you alive.”

He lets out a low, guttural sound, his salty lips brushing against yours as he ruts his flannel-cloaked dick up against your naked flesh—swollen and desperate—one more time. “Shit, Jamie… condom…”

Out of breath and grateful for your own forethought, you twist your slick body down towards the floor, your hand reaching out from under the duvet in desperate search of the little foil packet you’d grabbed from a fishbowl in the bedroom. You manage to grasp it and tear it open with your teeth. Pushing yourself up to him, you guide him onto his back against the far side of the sofa, his erection creating a right angle out of his pants and leaving a small space between his abdomen and the elastic waistband.

That little space, it taunts you. It’s like an invitation that neither you nor he can resist. He gazes at you expectantly, imploringly, and you crawl your fingers downwards into the darkness inside it, exalting in what you find along the way: skin taut with tension and damp with sweat, the textured fuzz of a treasure trail leading to a thatch of hair surrounding the root of his hefty, engorged cock. As you encircle his shaft with your hand he thrusts into it, making full use of its uncut nature and rewarding you with the sound of your name in a plaintive cry. Your thumb swabs over the tip and you can feel it weeping; the wet, slippery flannel cold against the back of your hand.

What you’d give to taste him. But not today, it’s too late for that now. The rules on Love Island are strict. His breath is ragged and you know he won’t last once you begin in earnest.

He sighs softly, body shaking a little as you release him and draw your hand out. Your fingers hook into his waistband and slowly pull down his pyjama bottoms along with his pants, relishing the moment his dick springs forth from its confines. And is it ever glorious. A nice size but not enormous. Not caricaturish. You take a moment to honour it through gentle exploration in the darkness, cupping his balls, unable to resist pressing his length against your cheeks, your lips, well, maybe just a little taste… he bucks against you as you draw the head into the soft warmth of your mouth—for just a moment—tasting him. Magnificent. “This is, quite possibly, the most perfect dick I’ve ever seen,” you say.

“Sunshine, I’m gonna fuck ye with it.”

His words are powerfully delivered and so arousing coming from this sweet freckled boy who not long ago was shaking with nerves just to be here with you. He climbs between your legs and you feel him rub his now naked cock through he folds of your pussy. Your muscles are beginning to tense again and Bobby reads this, complementing your body language with his own, focusing on bringing you back up to crest the wave of acute arousal with his fingers. They make joyous work of your clit while his thumb now sweeps over the ridges inside you until your pussy is heaving and you’re begging to swallow him whole.

There’s a brief pause accompanied by the sound of a plastic crinkle. His hands have left your body and it’s torturous. But before you know it they’re back on your skin, gently pressing down on your inner thighs to open you up to him. You feel the tip of his cock tease at your hole and you writhe before him. He suddenly then plunges into you, filling you up with his body, and sighing with heavy relief.

He pulls himself all the way out leaving you empty and wanting. But he soon eases himself back in, straight to the hilt, and slowly enough to drive you mad. Slowly enough that you feel the sweet friction with every millimetre and so desperately deep his body is pressing against your clit. For a moment, he rocks against you. Into you. You’re so fucking _hungry_ for him.

He now begins pumping into you, easing into a regular rhythm. At this angle, you’re building towards release with every. Single. Thrust. He picks up the pace, his breathing becoming more and more ragged and the sound of his voice now colouring each exhale as he fucks you harder and faster. Your muscles tense, urging you to open yourself to him as wide as you’ll go, rapturing in the sensitive flesh of your pussy being fucked so thoroughly inside and out. And as you’re about to crest that wave, he places a firm hand over the soft, downy hair of your pussy, holding you steady. You feel him curl two fingers into you, slipping them in alongside himself, still thrusting into you doggedly. He finds that ridged target once more but this time he presses upwards on it and you feel a thousand tiny sparklers behind your eyes, flickering you into oblivion, your body jerking upwards into him again and again as your insides convulse around him in waves.

“_Fuck_, Jamie,” he hisses, totally lost in your body. He’s not far behind you, you can tell. He leans into you and snakes his fingers into your hair, scrunching it deliciously tight, all the while still thrusting in and out of you like you’re an addiction he can’t quit. His movements are tense now, frenetic even, and you feel his grip on your hair tighten as he nears climax. With one final thrust he shudders and uncoils into you, collapsing down onto your body, laying over you like a weighted blanket.

Still.

Hearts pounding.

Breathing together.

In the heat under the duvet, you smell of his exertion lingers. A musky fresh sweat mixed with the pipe tobacco scent of his hair. You remain quiet for some time, enjoying the feeling of being together like this, flushed and glowing, with him still inside you.

“Wow,” you say eventually, your breath beginning to catch up with you.

“Wow.” He smiles at you.

“I… never want to leave this sofa.”

He chuckles lightly. “Let’s just spend the rest of the summer in here then,” he says, nodding up at the duvet.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind that one bit.”

“That said, it’s positively tropical in here…”

“Maybe we need a break?”

“I think ye may be right,” he says, propping himself up on his elbows to take his weight off you. “Jakub says stayin’ in a sauna for longer than ten minutes will kill ye.” He pulls away the duvet from your heads and tucks it around you, keeping your naked bodies private from the cameras stationed around the room. “He can be pretty extra, though.”

You can see his amber eyes reflecting in the diffused light now. They’re sparkling. Brown, green, and gold. They crinkle around the edges as he smiles at you, brushing your treacle-coloured hair from your sweaty forehead. 

You look down at his chest, feigning curiosity. “What…” 

“Nice try,” he says, reaching out and tapping the end of your nose with his finger.


	15. Chapter 15

The room looks like a skip. Evidence of what ye did last night is all over the place: clothes layin’ in a heap on the floor, dead phone on the sofa cushion with the water bottle still on it, other belongings strewn about the place. Jamie’s still sleeping. So bonnie when she sleeps, soft snores flichterin’ out of her like the rumble of a purring cat.

That hits ye like a dart.

Briony snored like that.

You screw your eyes shut, irrationally bothered by the similarity. It’s about the only similarity you can see between her and Jamie, but similar it is.

Don’t think about her, man.

You’ve had a few years since she finished with ye to grow from it. To keep makin’ mistakes and to learn from them. To become the kind of man a lass can take seriously.

“You _will not_ fuck this up,” you whisper to yourself as you stroke Jamie’s hair from her forehead. How could ye? Fuck sakes, you’ve known her a month and she’s already your rainbow fish. She’s been your rainbow fish from the moment she squeaked out that dainty wee fart to make ye laugh when ye were feelin’ down. It just took ye a while to realize it.

As she begins to wake up, you tip her jaw toward ye silently, guiding her lips to yours. She reaches around your back sleepily, pullin’ ye on top of her as she kisses ye. Briony, and all the reasons she gave for leavin’ ye, dissolve in the back of your mind as ye sink yourself into the crook of Jamie’s neck, breathing in the scent of her hair.

“Hello, you,” you say, smilin’ down at her as ye pull away.

Jamie smiles back. “Morning.”

You bite your bottom lip. Your entire body becomes alive to the fact that she’s in the skud beneath ye. Starkers. Totally naked. And so are you. She’s so soft. But you… well, you’re definitely not. Hopefully she doesna mind it.

Lottie’s tinny laugh echoes outside the lounge. Right. You’re in a shared space with no but an unlocked door between you and the others. Jamie grins, pulling the duvet tighter around herself. “We’d better get dressed,” ye say, “unless you dinna mind getting caught.”

* * *

The early evening summer sun is down low in the sky and the islanders are splashing away the humidity of the day in the infinity pool. Everyone except you and Bobby, that is. What started as a plan to surprise Gary and Marisol with a thank you toast for their role in helping you communicate has quickly ballooned into something much less altruistic. You and Bobby have a sparkler of a secret. 

With Bobby being a regular fixture in the kitchen, it was easy for the two of you to take some uninterrupted time without arousing too much suspicion. Marisol and Graham had been sent away on a date which left only Gary to work around, and he had his hands full navigating the challenges of sharing a villa with both Lottie and Emily. So away from the prying eyes of the only two who were really in the know, Bobby made  _ palmiers _ while you sat on the kitchen surface and watched, the two of you laughing as he rolled and folded again and again until he had a tray of pretty heart-shaped pastries.

“They’re lovely, Bobby. Everyone’ll be well chuffed.”

“Thanks,” he says as he slides the tray into the warm glow of the oven. He turns back to you and grins, his eyes playfully looking you up and down. “What’s small, gorgeous all over, and begins with a Y?”

“Hum,” you say, considering. This was going to be a Bobby special for sure. “What?”

“You.”

You roll your eyes with dramatic flair and Bobby throws his head back, laughing. “I know, I know.”

“What’s well-risen, sweet, and has a creamy filling?”

“Erm… what?”

“You.”

Bobby’s eyes widen and he laughs. “My god… that was certainly something! I appreciate the baking references. And, well… heh, y’see…” he says, suddenly looking away awkwardly. “All. Well, you’ve gone and done it again, lass.”

“Done what?”

Following his lead, you glance down at his purple trunks. “Oh,” you say, lifting your eyes to meet his again. Bobby’s lower lip catches between his teeth and you cross one knee over the other, tightening your thighs as if to squeeze away the sudden throbbing between your legs.

“Gads,” says Bobby, looking over his shoulder. “Think unsexy thoughts…”

You turn to look behind you and the source of Bobby’s alarm becomes clear. Noah’s climbed out of the pool and is walking with purpose towards the kitchen. “Uh, tell me about your nan,” you say quickly, almost cross-eyed with laughter.

“Sturdier than a highland coo she was, and not so nice either. She had the personality of an ice cube tray. Stiff, organized, and cauld as all fuck.”

“She sounds… lovely?”

“Not at all. I’m almost scairt she’ll come back from the dead just to give ma bum a wallopin’ for saying so,” he says, laughing as he hides his lower half against the cabinetry. “Haw, Noah.”

“Hiya,” says Noah, ignoring you as he walks to the fridge. He plucks an ice lolly from the freezer, his face pinched, and walks out towards the loungers where Lottie’s gesticulating wildly in the midst of an animated monologue while Hope dries off with a towel.

“That guy’s a fool,” says Bobby softly, reaching out to tuck a few treacle-coloured whisps behind your ear. “Just imagine havin’ ye and lettin’ ye go like that.”

You chat idly, hearts full with each other, for a while longer until the timer sounds. Bobby arms himself with puffy blue mitts and opens the glass door, sending a plume of dry heat all the way to the kitchen surface where you’re sat. He pulls out the tray of _palmiers_; golden brown, shiny, and so perfect they belong in the display case of a Parisian bakery. “Those are proper mint,” you say.

“They’re no bad if I do say so myself,” says Bobby. “Especially in this humidity. Thanks for helping me make ‘em.”

“They’re are all you, Bob.”

“Well ye kept me company, and that counts.”

“It wasn’t exactly a chore. Speaking of which, why don’t I do the washing up? You go relax. Or wash your face,” you say, using your thumb to rub off a dusting of flour on his cheek.

“It’s a fine offer, but I’d rather hang out wi’ you if ye dinna mind. I’ll dry.” He checks to make sure no one’s watching and plants a floury kiss on your forehead. “You know, coupley things.”

After a minute or two of comfortable teamwork you turn to Bobby. “Noah’s been glaring at us from the daybeds. D’you think we’ve outed ourselves this afternoon?” you say, giggling.

“Naw. Noah’s got plenty of reasons to watch ye.”

“Plotting against me, is he?”

“If he is, you’ve got a brave and fearless knight to protect ye!” Bobby grabs a baguette from the bread basket and waves it around, hooting with laughter.

You burst into a fit of giggles, dropping a soapy dish with a wet clang back into the sink. “Oh my days Bobby! You’re such a laugh!”

His smile falters. For a brief moment, it’s as if someone has pressed pause on Bobby as he stands next to you by the sink, baguette in hand, muscles tense. But before you can say a word, he gives you a friendly hip bump. “What can I say? I’m a funny guy.”

“Is everything okay?” you ask tentatively, a metallic aftertaste of confusion and concern lingering in your skin. You pull off the washing up gloves and reach out to touch his back.

“Always,” he says, chuckling brightly and giving your bum a playful swat with the baguette before returning it to the basket. “Fancy a secret snog?”

“I do,” you say. He’ll talk when he’s ready.

Bobby grabs your hand and takes the lead, his amber eyes twinkling with merriment as he pulls you under the lattice-covered walkway into the villa. Both of you are acutely aware that you’re out of view. He runs his thumb across your bottom lip and brings his face close to yours so that your lips are almost, but not quite, touching.

Your eyes flicker downwards. You feel your face flushing in anticipation of continuing what began only with words and glances in the kitchen.

He whispers something so quietly you almost don’t hear it at first. “How long d’you think you can stand not kissing me?” His eyes narrow and he smiles, the left corner of his mouth nudging upward to define that single, sweet dimple.

“Shut up and kiss me already, you cheeky bastard.”

“And he does, the heat of it building in intensity with each passing second. His fingers run through your hair, triggering a felt memory of last night and you catch yourself moaning softly into him. Desperate to be really, meaningfully alone with him. No other islanders. No producers. No _cameras_. Alone.

Until suddenly, a little tickle—

“A-CHOO!”

“Bless you!” says Bobby, a little started.

“Thanks.”

He grins as he brushes the flour from his body. It’s no the first time this has happened. Believe me.”

“A hazard of dating a baker, I suppose.”

“That’s for definite. But there are perks.”

“A never-ending supply of cupcakes?”

“Aye, perhaps. But that’s not all,” he says. And suddenly, so smoothly, Bobby spins you around so your back is against the villa wall. Your stomach flips like a pancake. He leans toward you, resting his weight on the wall with one arm. “The thing about baking is that it’s no just an art, it’s a science, too. Too much of this, too little of that and your cake’s pooched.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“What I’m sayin’ is that ye have to really learn how everything works together to create the perfect rise, you get me?”

“I think you’re trying to tell me why you’re so good in bed.”

Bobby bursts out laughing. “See? This is why I dinna do ‘sexy’,” he says, ruffling your hair with his free hand. Your eyes begin to cross as he lifts a finger and taps it gently against the end of your nose.

“Boop.”

* * *

Flour-dusted kisses in the walkway had turned into a high-risk romp in the shower, with Bobby on his knees before you. You rocked into him, muscles wound with delicious tension; thigh tightening into the crook of his neck as you shuddered in release against his mouth. Bobby hummed with gratitude for it, his amber eyes sparkling as they met yours, hooded and drunk in the afterglow.

But in the hour or so since, your bodily wants thoroughly tamed, that gentle yet unpleasant thrum that sparked in the kitchen has settled itself back into you gut. Persisting.

The public vote announced can’t have helped.

From the firepit, you hear the boys come around the corner and make their way across the lawn. Bobby’s laughter echoes loudest of all as he slaps Gary on the back. “Scuba gear!” he says, shaking his head and chuckling at a joke you didn’t hear. You roll your shoulders back and shake your head, trying to unseat the niggle of disjointed thoughts within it. You chuckle to yourself. You can be so melodramatic.

Bobby’s eyes meet yours as he approaches the firepit with the boys, but he pitches forward, tripping up the stepped platform. He recovers, laughing. “I’m okay!” he bellows, flashing you a confident smile, then moves to stand with Lottie and Rahim. The other single people. You almost forgot you’re not an official couple yet.

He draws you in, draping his arm around you in that familiar way and you realize he’s not as okay portrays himself. He seems distracted. Ungrounded. Brain-busy. Almost vibrating.

“Nervous?”

“Naw. It’s just weird wi’ everyone looking at us. I know we’re the single ones, but it’s kinda like they’re all here to watch us get married,” he says. Suddenly, his eyes light up. “I’m gonna be the vicar. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”

Heat rushes to your cheeks and you make eye contact with Lottie. She’s even paler than usual. “How are you feeling, babe?” you ask, squeezing her hand.

“I don’t want anyone to go home. I mean, of course I don’t want _Gary_ to go home, but it’s not just that. I know I haven’t always gotten along with everyone—“

“Oh, Loz,” you say. “None of that matters anymore. It’ll be hard if we lose some friends tonight, but this doesn’t end when we live the villa. I promise.”

“Oi! No talking in church!”

Suddenly, your phone beeps.

“And didn’t I tell ye to turn your phones off at the start of the service?”

“Babe, shh,” you say, nudging Bobby. You can’t help but wish he’d cool it on the jokes, just for tonight. Even though you know why he does it. “_Islanders, the public have been voting for their favourite couples. The couples with the fewest votes are now in danger of being dumped from the island.”_

Emily’s phone beeps and she snatches it from the bench. “_The couples with the fewest votes are…_” she says, releasing a slow sigh and wrinkling her nose. “I’m sorry, guys. _Priya and Arjun._”

Priya’s face falls. She takes Arjun’s hand and they stand together in front of the firepit. And two-by-bwo, others join them, made vulnerable by the court of public opinion. Jakub and Hope, Chelsea and Henrik, and Noah and Blake are all on the chopping block. Only Marisol, Graham, Gary, and Emily are safe.

“Well, I guess we’re in the same boat after all,” says Noah to Hope.

“Yeah, without a paddle.”

The atmosphere around the firepit is becoming cynical, possibly even a little sardonic as the islanders wait on edge for the text they know is coming. It’s already clear that tonight is going to be the worst cull yet. A lot of people will go home.

You tense as the phone in Bobby’s pocket beeps and vibrates with an incoming message.

Bobby smirks. “Someone’s popular.”

“It’s like working in a telephone exchange,” says Gary.

“A what?” says Marisol.

“A telephone exchange. It’s how they used to connect phone calls across the country. You have this huge bank of sockets—“

Bobby starts waving his phone in the air to get everyone’s attention. “Guys, guys. Shut up for a second and listen to this. ‘Bobby, Lottie, Gary, and Jamie—the fate of the vulnerable islanders is now in your hands. You must each couple up wi’ one of the vulnerable islanders standing in front of ye. The remaining four islanders will be dumped.’”

Lottie’s face is totally expressionless. Chelsea’s mouth hangs open. Hope and Noah look around at their partners, and then back at each other. A phone beeps.

_Lottie, you will choose first._

She sighs and steps forward to face the couples. “Well, I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to think about this… but it’s pretty obvious to me what I should do. I want to couple up with this boy because I think he deserves a chance at happiness. I might not be the perfect girl for him, but that’s because someone else here has already captured his heart. So the boy I want to couple up with is…” (she pauses for dramatic effect), “Henrik.”

Henrik whirls around to kiss Chelsea on the cheek before walking down to where Lottie is standing. “Thanks,” he says as they join the safe couples.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket. _Jamie, please choose an islander to couple up with. _You step forward from Bobby and Rahim, facing the vulnerable boys in front of you.

Noah, Jakub, and Arjun. Not exactly the comfiest bunch to choose from.

You take a deep breath and begin to speak. “When I look at the boys standing in front of me, I think about the girls standing next to them. And I’m sorry that not all the couples could make it. In the end, I can only choose one person. So the boy I want to couple up with is… Arjun.”

Arjun bursts into a broad grin and jogs towards you. “Jamie! Thank you so much. You really saved my eggs.”

“Don’t you mean bacon?”

“No, I mean eggs. They’re all in your basket now.”

“Um, we’re just friends,” you say, glancing apologetically at Priya who looks disgusted.

You sit down on the bench together and he puts his arm around you. Your shoulders tighten. “That’s fine. It means a lot to me that you’d choose me at all. We haven’t always got on, but maybe that makes things more exciting.”

“I dunno if ye heard the lass, but she said ‘just friends,’ mate.”

“Right,” says Arjun, withdrawing his arm sheepishly.

Rahim’s phone beeps and he steps forward. Now that you look at him, you don’t think you’ve ever seen him more nervous. He rubs the back of his neck and as he moves, the beads of sweat that have broken out on his temple catch the light.

“Well,” he says finally, “this is going to be unexpected. For most of you, that is. _God,_ I guess I’m doing this.” He expels a puff of air before continuing. “After the last recoupling—the one before Casa Amor, I mean—I wondered if something I thought totally impossible might actually, one day, _not_ be. I want to couple up with this girl because I’ve fancied the heck out of her for a while now. She’s so smart, strong, and gorgeous. A hole-in-one. And even if she doesn’t fancy me back right now, or ever, I don’t think it’s her time to leave the villa yet. It’ll be a new experience for her after tonight, whether I get to be a part of it or not. So, the girl I want to couple up with is… Hope.”

“Gaun yourself, Rahim!” says Bobby, as Hope wanders over to the bench in shock. She glances back at Noah who just looks, well, defensive. Awkward.

“Did you know about this?” you whisper to Bobby.

“Aye. Just me and Gary. Sorry lass, I was sworn to secrecy until he sorted himself out. Op, I guess that’s me,” he says as the phone buzzes in his pocket.

Blake, Priya, and Chelsea link hands as Bobby steps forward. “Whatever happens, ladies, I’m glad ye were here wi’ me. I wish I wasna the last person to go. It makes this decision so much more difficult.

“Blake, I know we havena known each other very long, but I know that if we had more time, we’d have gotten along famously. Priya… I dunno what to say. You’re funny, you’re glamorous, you’re the heart of the villa and I’m honoured ye ever thought I was in your league. And finally, Chelsea, you’re an absolute hoot. A bonnie one at that. You’re always there to support your friends, and you’re funny, even if ye dinna always mean to be. Losing you in this villa would be a tragedy to us all. But none of that matters. I want to be in the business of keepin’ people together, not splittin’ em apart. So the girl I want to couple up with, as a temporary stand-in, is Chelsea. Because she belongs with Henrik. She’s the Cassandra to his Wayne.”

Chelsea’s eyes open wide. “Are you serious?”

“Come on down, baby girl.”

Chelsea runs down and hugs him. She startles a moment, then looks back at Blake and Priya. “Oh. I’m going to miss you girls,” she says, her face falling like a deflating soufflé.

Priya smiles. “Babe, this is your moment. Take it.”

Everyone turns to look at the people left standing in front of the firepit.

“I got a text,” says Blake, looking down at her phone. “Blake, Priya, Jakub, and Noah, as you have not been chosen, you are now dumped from the island. Please get ready to leave the villa immediately.”

* * *

“I guess we tell them tomorrow,” you say, later on as the two of you cross the lawn to get ready for bed. It just didn’t seem appropriate. Not now.

“_Palmiers_ for breakfast,” says Bobby. “I like it.”

You climb into the bed next to Arjun, hair in a messy topknot and wearing your least sexy pyjamas. At least, you thought they were your least sexy ones. They’ve taken on new meaning since last night. Bobby’s in the next bed over with Chelsea, under the fluffy white duvet and only visible from the eyes up. He hikes his eyebrows then gives you an exaggerated wink. As the lights go out, you realize that despite the intensity of the evening, and the loss of a good friend, you feel calm. More settled than ever. And happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow my progress on twitter, where I post teasers for every chapter (@meroboh)
> 
> Title inspired by the lyrics to the song Yellow by coldplay.
> 
> Cover art in chapter one by BrokenDarling (@bruneshah on twitter)


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